


it costs too much to think of you

by jackiefreckles



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alcoholism, Bellarke, Forgiveness, Found Family, Modern AU Teachers, Multi, canon character death, clurphy--past tense, cw: child abuse, cw: toxic behavior, delinquents 2.0, jasper and clarke friendship supremacy, jonty, lots of cussing, loving people despite their ugliest moments, making amends, murven - Freeform, past murphamy dynamics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-16 17:54:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 52,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29828697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackiefreckles/pseuds/jackiefreckles
Summary: Bellamy Blake destroyed everyone around him before he left Arkadia, including Clarke Griffin. Eight years later he's back, teaching in the classroom across from hers, and set on making amends. But no one--including Clarke--is ready to forgive him.
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin, Monty Green/Jasper Jordan, Raven Reyes/John Murphy
Comments: 205
Kudos: 122





	1. You Think About Yourself Too Much (you ruin who you love)

**Author's Note:**

> You know I can't just have a soft, fluffy WIP, so this one's full of alcoholism, toxic behavior verging on abuse, and the fallout when your substance abuse problems become too much to handle. Consider this your content warning. 
> 
> It's also about the way running from your problems means they're only bigger when you return.
> 
> Bellamy's made a lot of mistakes in this story, but we're catching up with him when he wants to do better. Unfortunately, his former friends aren't exactly predisposed to let him.

**_Clarke_ **

Clarke tries to ignore her phone when she’s teaching, she really does. She keeps it in the top left hand drawer and when there’s a break in the action, she’ll glance at it, make sure no important texts or calls have come through.

Just in case, she always tells herself. In case of what, she’s not exactly sure. In case her mother wants to apologize for their last, ridiculous fight? In case Lexa wants to get back together? 

No, she tells herself sternly, no. In case a pipe has burst in her apartment. In case her dad wants to talk. In case her roommate, Monty, has let the cat out again or in case Murphy’s in the drunk tank. No matter that it’s Tuesday morning, Murphy has a habit of drinking and getting belligerent on any day of the week, and Clarke’s drawn on her trust fund more times than she can count to bail his sorry ass out. She and Raven always say Murphy’s middle name is “Drunk and Disorderly.”

Today she can’t wait for a break, and her students are quick to shame her when she grabs her phone. It’s been buzzing nonstop for an hour, and she has to see what’s going on. 

“Ooooooh, Miss Griffin, I don’t want to hear a WORD next time I look at my phone!” Madi yells from her place in the back row. 

“Four paragraphs on Van Gogh, due tomorrow, and no, I don’t care that there’s a football game tonight,” Clarke says mildly, “all of you, just in case you’re tempted to add to Madi’s sass.”

There are ten texts from Raven, and the last reads, **I don’t care HOW busy you are, you need to call me right now. Pretend your mom’s sick, I don’t care. Call. Me.**

“I’m stepping into the hall,” Clarke tells her class. “If you’re planning on making the game, I suggest you start your new assignment.”

She closes the door, dials Raven, hisses, “What the hell is so urgent?” 

“I need you to not freak out,” Raven’s voice seems pitched a little higher, a little hysterical, so unlike her. “So promise me you’re not going to freak out.”

Clarke sighs, rubs her forehead, says, “Okay, I guess? I’m not going to freak out.”

There’s a silent moment, just a moment, that hangs between them and terrifies Clarke. 

Raven finally comes out with it: “Bellamy’s back in town.”

Bellamy, all dark curls, freckled nose, and chocolate eyes, swims before Clarke’s vision unbidden. Her heart takes a dive, a quick, excruciating, pang in her chest.

She makes a soft noise. She didn’t mean to, but when the boy who broke your heart returns as a man, you can be forgiven a little whimper, a little whine. 

“It gets worse,” Raven says, “Clarke, it gets so much worse.”

At this moment Clarke lifts her eyes to the classroom across from hers, and sees the worst: Bellamy’s chiseled cheekbones, his full lips, lifting a book and pushing glasses up his nose. 

“Shit,” she whispers to Raven, “oh, shit, shit, shit.”

“He’s teaching history,” her friend says. “His classroom is right across from yours.”

“I’m staring at him like a creeper right fucking now. Oh my god, I need to go home.” Clarke can’t breathe, “I think I’m having a panic attack.”

“Hey, okay, I’ll be there in two minutes. These hellions will be okay for a couple of minutes...I think.” Clarke knows Raven is looking out over the shop class, wondering how many things are flammable. “Actually, no. They won’t. Okay. Breathe in, and count to three. Then breathe out, and count to three. Five times, Clarke, okay?”

Clarke sinks to the ground, her back sliding along the wall she so carefully painted with a mural over the summer. “I can’t do this, Raven. I need to go home. I need to go home.”

“You can’t go home,” Raven’s got her talking-you-off-a-ledge tone down to an art, the result of a lifelong friendship with Murphy. “Diyoza would kick your ass, for one thing. But he’d just be here tomorrow, and you’d have to face him then.”

“Does he know I teach here, too?” 

“He’d have to be blind, to not know. There’s that giant mural, and the part where it says, _Ms. Griffin--Art_ on your classroom door. And anyway, I’m sure Octavia told him.”

“They’re not speaking,” Clarke reminds Raven. “I saw her a few weeks ago and she said they haven’t talked in months, and she was an epic level of furious, even for Octavia.”

“Hey! Don’t touch that, Atom Graves, or you’ll be sitting in detention for a month!” Raven clears her throat. “Listen, these delinquents are about to get wild with welding torches and I feel I’ve done my duty in warning you. We’ll have a wine date tonight, okay? Your house?”

“Okay. Yeah. I think I’m gonna do vodka instead of wine, though.”

“You deserve it. Now go torture your class with art history facts like this is any other day.”

Torture’s an exaggeration--Clarke Griffin is one of the most-liked teachers at Arkadia High. Raven Reyes, stern but prone to blowing things up for the fun of it, is also popular with her shop students. Jasper Jordan comes in right behind them, concocting crazy chemistry experiments that keep his students engaged. 

Now there’s Bellamy Blake, teaching history. If his love of the subject as a teenager is any indication, his students will appreciate him. He has a way of explaining things that always fascinated Clarke. She spent a lot of nights listening to him expound upon the day-to-day life of ancient Romans. Back then, she loved to hear him talk about anything. 

Back then, she loved him, period. 

But that was a long time ago. Bellamy broke Clarke and she put herself back together piecemeal, a little bit at a time, and she doesn’t know if this bandaged-up version of herself can stand up to seeing _Mr. Blake--History_ every day. 

The bell rings and Clarke jumps to her feet, throwing the door open: “Do NOT forget those paragraphs on Van Gogh! They’re due first thing tomorrow and I will be giving zeroes to those who don’t have them!” 

Her students spill out, seemingly unconcerned, and she knows that quite a few of them will be up late tonight after the game, using Wikipedia to write their reports despite every teacher in school telling them it’s not a valid source. 

Madi hesitates at Clarke’s desk, and when the classroom’s empty she asks, “Ms. Griffin, are you okay? Your face is all…” Madi makes a flapping gesture. 

Clarke could cry over her concern. “Yeah, I just got a bit of a shock. No big deal, Madi, don’t worry about me.”

“Who says I’m worried?” Madi gives her a nose wrinkle. “See you at the game tonight?” 

Clarke groans inwardly. No vodka for her, she has to show her face in school colors--they’re playing their rivals, Polis High. 

“Yeah, I’ll be there. But I won’t embarrass you by acknowledging your existence.”

Madi rolls her eyes--peak teenager--on her way out of the classroom. 

She’s easily Clarke’s favorite student, sass and all. 

It’s Clarke’s planning period, and all she’s going to plan is how to avoid Bellamy for the next however-long, until he gets restless being back in Arkadia, and leaves again. There is no version of reality in which he doesn’t leave again. Maybe this time he won’t leave an angry alcoholic who resents every tiny thing tying him to this town, but he will leave. 

He always leaves, and Clarke, rubbing an old ache in her wrist, hopes that this time he doesn’t destroy everyone who loves him on the way out. 

Since there are no children present to keep her honest, she texts Murphy: **Bellamy’s not only back in town, but teaching history in the classroom across from mine.**

Murphy replies characteristically: **Punch him in the face for me. And for you. Punch him twice**. A pause. **Hell, punch him three times, I’m sure there’s someone else out there who needs it.**

She’s got her head in her hands when someone knocks softly on her door, then cracks it. 

Bellamy’s low voice: “Clarke?”

Her head jerks up, takes him in: Same messy curls, button down shirt rolled up at the sleeves, Harry-Potter-esque glasses. 

Still the most handsome man she’s ever seen, and she hates that. 

Clarke rubs at her wrist again, and Bellamy’s face is all pain and guilt in an instant. 

“Hurts when it rains,” she says with a shrug, trying to brush away the hurt, even though he doesn’t deserve that. 

“So...how are you?” He sounds like a puppy waiting to be kicked. 

He always had such a knack for playing the victim. 

“Let’s not do this, Bellamy. I don’t want to, I actually can’t.”

“Please, listen--I have a lot to say to you and I--”

“You’re going to get sick of Arkadia again, and I am not going to be the person left standing holding the ashes when you burn your way out of this town. So we’re not friends. We’re not going to be friends, and I don’t care what you want to say.”

He stands in the door, holding himself carefully, offers: “I’m in AA, on step 9. Making amends, and you’re the person I--”

“I don’t want your fucking amends!” Clarke stands quickly behind her desk. “You had a million chances to make them after--but you just left. You left your friends, and you left me. So fuck your amends. Make them to your sister, to your mom. Me, and Raven, and Murphy? We’re not interested.”

“You’re the person I hurt the most,” he whispers, as if he didn’t hear her. “When you’re ready, Clarke, I have a lot to say to you, a lot to apologize for.” He looks at his hands, like they are the very things that broke Clarke all those years ago, and then he looks back up at her with liquid eyes: “I’m not leaving Arkadia. My mom’s dying. Uh, breast cancer. She probably doesn’t have more than a couple of months. And after that, I’m staying to get Octavia through high school. So…I’m sorry that it hurts you I’m here, and believe me, I thought about it long and hard before I took this job.” 

Anger dissipates, hard to hold onto; Clarke has always loved Aurora Blake, an altogether softer mother than Clarke’s own. She moves towards Bellamy almost against her will: “I’m so sorry about your mom, that’s heartbreaking. Is Octavia--?”

Octavia Blake is sixteen, a problem child but a beautiful one, with moments of sunny, rare sweetness. Clarke has had a soft spot for her since she was a little girl, begging “Bell” for attention, unable to understand his mood swings and his sudden exit from their family. Clarke doesn’t have her in class, but sometimes catches her in the halls or at extracurriculars, always tries to find a kind word for a girl who’d been betrayed by the person she trusted most in the world. 

Because Clarke knows how that felt on a cellular level. 

Bellamy ducks his head, a muscle in his jaw twitching, Clarke knows it means he’s angry, and she backs away again, puts the desk between them. He reaches for her, and her chest feels like it might cave open. 

“No, it’s--Clarke, you have to understand that I’m mad at myself. Not you or Octavia. Not my mom, or Raven and Murphy who have every right to hate me.”

“To hate you a lot,” Clarke corrects. “They have every right to hate you a lot. And so do I. And Bellamy, it’s better for me, easier for me, to feel that way. So if you wanna make amends, just stay out of my way, alright? Like, I get it, you’re sorry, but you were sorry so many times back then, and nothing ever changed, it just spiraled further and further out of control. I can’t have that in my life again.”

He nods, and holds out a thick envelope: “My sponsor said that you might not want to talk to me. He said I should respect your boundaries, and I will. But I wrote you this letter, and if you’d just take it? You can read it when you’re ready, or not read it at all. But I need to give it to you, please.”

She doesn’t want to get any closer to him, but reaches across the desk to take the envelope. 

His eyes don’t miss the scars on her wrist and hand, results of the surgery to put them back together after--

After something Clarke’s been blocking out for years, and she doesn’t have any intention of thinking about it now. 

The envelope doesn’t say _Clarke_ on the front, in his block-letter handwriting.

It says _Princess_ , and she whispers, “get out,” before this man can destroy her any further. 

Raven’s not pleased that wine night has been replaced by wearing all their school spirit gear and trying to stay warm in a cold, icy drizzle, and if it wasn’t for the promise of gossip about Clarke’s meeting with Bellamy, she probably wouldn’t have come at all. Murphy trails behind her for the exact same reason, looking irritated in a North Face jacket.

“You know,” he says nastily, “the only reasons I ever went to football games in high school were to smoke under the bleachers and try to get in Raven’s pants. With neither of those things being an option, I’m not really thrilled to be here. So let’s get right down to it: what’d that prick have to say for himself?”

Clarke sighs. “To start--his mom’s sick. Really sick, not-gonna-make-it sick.”

Raven’s mouth twists. “That’s sad. Aurora’s great...I think we all liked her better than our own parents.” 

“He’s um, apparently in AA now?”

Murphy snorts at this. 

“Don’t laugh, god knows you need AA too,” Raven snaps.

“Too much religious bullshit. I’m surprised they sucked Blake in.”

Clarke shrugs, feels like her shoulders are nearly as heavy as her heart. 

_My Atlas_ , Bellamy would say, brushing her hair out of her face, _you’re holding up the whole damn sky._

“He’s on that step where you make amends--”

“Oh, fuck him,” Murphy whistles between his teeth. “Did you tell him what he could do with his amends? Did you tell him to shove 'em up his ass? Did you show him your wrist, let him know you have to write and draw left-handed now?”

“He saw. I didn’t show him on purpose or say anything, but he had this letter when I wouldn’t talk to him, saw my scars when I reached for it.”

Raven interjects, “you shouldn’t have taken it. You should burn it.” 

And Clarke should--she knows she should--but she can’t. 

Some part of her is still that girl who loved Bellamy, and some part of her is itching to know what he wrote. 

“He’s just checking you off his list of AA steps, you know.” Murphy bumps her arm with his. “Don’t let him manipulate you.” 

And Clarke wishes that was true. Clarke wants that to be true. But there was such an unsteadiness to Bellamy, such an ache. 

But she cannot let Bellamy Blake ruin her life again. 

“Where’s Jasper?” Raven looks for the geeky young man, who normally joins them at the big football games. The trio has known Jasper practically since birth, and while he’s an altogether softer person than Raven or Murphy, Clarke loves him, always asks for his insight on the harder things. 

She’ll never forget the way he sat with her for hours while she learned to write legibly with her left hand, that he was the one who brought her a blank canvas and a set of charcoals, said: “Art’s in your soul, Clarke. It doesn’t matter which hand you draw with.”

Clarke relies on her tough friends, the ones who’d protect her at any cost, but Jasper will understand why she needs to read Bellamy’s letter, even though he had a front row seat for the fallout after--

After everything, to sum it up without the details that make her weak after all this time. 

When _Mr. Jordan--AP Chem_ finally appears, hiking through the slippery metal bleachers to sit on their blanket, he looks a shade more pale than usual. “Did I just see Bellamy Blake buying popcorn in the concession stand?” 

“He’s here?” Clarke asks, her voice nearly a moan. 

“None of you could have sent me a text letting me know he’s back in town?” Jasper has huge dark eyes, giving him a sense of innocence, of someone you need to protect. “That’s just great, guys, really appreciate it.”

“It’s way worse than that, Jasper, he’s the new history teacher.” Raven’s grim: delivering bad news seems to be her specialty today.

“In the classroom across from Clarke’s?” Jasper squeaks. “Are you serious?” He reaches across Raven’s lap to take Clarke’s hand. “Did he try to talk to you?” 

“He told her he’s in AA, and he wants to make amends,” Murphy’s voice is dripping with scorn, “like anyone could make amends for what happened, after all this time.”

“It’s up to Clarke if she wants to forgive him…” Jasper trails off, his voice doubtful. “But do you?”

“No. I want him to fucking disappear. But his mom’s sick, and we’re not gonna get rid of him until Octavia graduates, and this is a small town, so maybe I should just--”

“Absolutely fuckin’ not,” Murphy looks enraged and his voice climbs with every word: “That guy nearly ruined your life! Not to mention the rest of us--I got hurt that night, too, in case you don’t remember. And then he just blew town like none of it mattered, like Clarke wasn’t in the hospital! Fuck him. Fuck him ten ways to Tuesday, I hope he falls down the bleachers and breaks his own damn arm and then that’ll maybe be a start to his stupid, selfish amends--”

“Glad to know how you feel about it,” Bellamy says from their right, popcorn in one hand, having approached quietly. 

Murphy shoots to his feet, and Clarke can see the tremble in his hands as he closes them into fists. “If you have a letter for me, Blake, you can fucking choke on it. You’re the biggest piece of shit I’ve ever known, and coming from me, that’s saying a lot.”

Bellamy nods. “I deserve that.” 

Raven wraps her fingers around Murphy’s, says, “He’s not worth it,” while studiously avoiding Bellamy’s face. 

They used to be so close, and Clarke’s throat swells at the memory of their younger selves, Bellamy and Raven trying to figure out how to get his beat-up Camaro to go faster, Murphy and Clarke laying in the grass, eating Red Vines and arguing with Jasper about the best way to make pot brownies. But that was a different time--feels like it was a different planet. Even looking at Bellamy back then gave her a natural high, his smile fed her soul, the way he’d wink when no one was looking…

Clarke would flop her legs over Murphy’s knees and say, “You’re hogging the Red Vines,” and he’d say:

“Fuck off, Griffin, I didn’t have lunch.” 

He never had lunch, that was the tragedy of Murphy, no money and no prospects, so Clarke would head into the Blakes’ small house and make him a baloney and cheese sandwich. 

It happened that way a thousand times, and there was a comfort to it all, to the smell of grease, to Jasper’s overenthusiastic hand-waving and the flash of gratitude in Murphy’s eyes. He never wanted to ask for anything, but he always needed something.

In that way, he hasn’t changed at all. 

Clarke stands abruptly. “I’m starving, and it’s cold. Let’s go back to my place, I’ll make dinner.” There’s a murmur of assent, even as Murphy stares Bellamy down. Clarke risks a look in his direction. Bellamy’s got his lip caught between his teeth, like he’s going to say more, but then he just turns away, and not far from where they are, Aurora Blake is sitting, wrapped in a blanket. 

Her face is so troubled Clarke nearly breaks, nearly runs after Bellamy, but instead she makes a mental note to find a time when he’s not home to visit the woman who was her second mother for so many years. 

Raven slips her hand in Murphy’s, clenches her fingers against his. “We’re leaving now,” she murmurs to him, “fighting Bellamy is going to get you nowhere.”

Clarke glances at Jasper: “C’mon, Monty would love to see you.” 

This lights up a smile on Jasper’s sad face. “Only if Murphy cooks instead of you.”

“I’ve still got a jar of cherry moonshine from Monty’s last batch, too.” Clarke makes sure her voice carries. “We can get really drunk and play Cards Against Humanity.” 

The message is there: _We still get drunk together. We still have fun. Without you._

_We’re fine without you._

_I’m fine without you._

_Everything that’s happened in the past eight years has been without you_ , she thinks, _and until today I liked it that way._


	2. The Choices Were Given (now you must live them)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bellamy writes a LOT of letters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger Warning for some mention of suicidal thoughts. 
> 
> Super excited over y'all's reaction to the first chapter! I literally could NOT stop writing the second chapter once I had the idea in my head, and I will probably be posting them this way from now on, one chapter in the present, one chapter showing the past in letters, and probably on the same day. So yay for more content!

_**Bellamy** _

4/23/13

~~Clarke~~ ~~Princess~~ Clarke,

~~I drove West for three days.~~

~~I still can’t stop thinking of you at the bottom of the stairs.~~

~~You deserve more than this shitty letter but I don’t deserve more than writing it.~~

I slept in my car last night. The thing about leaving town in a half-drunk hurry is that you don’t always remember the details. I forgot my Social Security Card and I need it to get hired. I left that $600 I saved stuffed under my mattress. If you need that money for anything, it’s yours. I was saving it for your graduation trip in any case. But I had to ask a librarian how to get a new copy of the card. She was nice but I could tell the state of my face was a concern to her. Murphy landed some good punches. I’ve got a black eye, and a cut on my cheek. 

So I can’t afford a hotel room, and I can’t get a real job. Last night I worked in a taco shop and got paid under the table. One of the kitchen guys said I can work on his dad’s yard crew tomorrow, so I think I’ll be able to survive until the card comes. And sleeping in the car isn’t that bad. Just a hitch in my neck.

It’s not a broken arm, and I swear, Clarke, I never meant for that to happen. I called Jasper to see how you’re doing, but he just said that if I care so much I should come back. He was tough, I’ve never heard him sound like that. I wish I could come back, but what would be the point? You’ll never see me the same way.

I broke you. I broke us.

I need a drink. 

I love you, and even though I’m not there I hope you know that.

Or maybe I hope you don’t. Whatever you need to think to get better, to be okay. 

When I’m trying to fall asleep I’m sure you’ll never be okay, and that’s my fault. 

I don’t think I’m going to send this letter.

5/4/13

Princess,

Jasper felt sorry for me and told me how you are. 

I want to drink until I die. 

5/19/13

Hey Princess,

It’s your birthday. I thought we’d be doing this together, celebrating eighteen. Remember how your dad promised you fireworks? I drove almost all the way home, parked at the edge of town. 

I saw the explosions in the sky and I hope they meant you’re doing well enough for a birthday party, even though I know you’d be happy just sitting with Raven, Jasper, and Murphy. Laying on your backs like last year’s Fourth of July. Remember how you said it felt like you could touch them? I kissed you until we’d made our own. 

I don’t want to love you, it feels selfish. 

But I don’t know how not to. 

6/27/13

Clarke,

I made a friend. I’ve never had to make a friend before, it was strange. I feel like I just woke up in Arkadia one day with a built-in friend group. Raven causing trouble on a dirtbike she shouldn’t have been riding, Murphy stealing his dad’s Jim Beam and bringing it over, Jasper scared of his shadow but the smartest person I knew. And then you, Princess, you were there too, all smiles and sarcasm, carrying around Red Vines in your backpack like they’re a fucking food group. You’re the toughest girl I’ve ever met, hiding under a sweet face and ribbons in your hair. Remember when you punched Dax for stealing Jasper’s lunch? I knew then that you were a keeper.

Only I failed at the keeping. 

But anyway my friend, his name’s Miller, and I’ve been sleeping on his couch. We get a little wild together, but it doesn’t matter, his dad’s the chief of police. If we get caught they just haul us home in a police car. It’s kind of hilarious, I’ll admit things have gotten a little wild for me.

I’m pretty sure I’m on the edge of something, teetering, and I should be careful, I should step back, but you were always the one who told me when it was time to do that. 

Now that you’re not here, I might just fall off. 

7/1/13

Princess,

When I called Jasper today, Raven answered. 

If she could have torn my teeth out with her throat I think she might’ve. And I wouldn’t blame her, because she told me you’re learning to write with your left hand, that you might not be able to draw again. 

I can’t absorb that news, can’t make it make sense. You are art. You won every art contest for so long people started getting mad. Remember when Maya demanded you be disqualified? 

Art is breathing, for Clarke Griffin. 

I took that away from you. 

Raven told me not to call anymore, and I won’t. 

I might not write for a while, either. Not that you’re seeing these letters. 

Sometimes, though, I pretend you are. 

9/16/13

hey princess,  
drunk and i miss you some things never change wish we could hide out in octavia’s tree house and tell secrets like when we were 12 but i fucked up and i can’t come home but i don’t think i can stay here  
clarke i wish you’d tell me what to do because i miss you so much there’s a hole in my chest i feel like someone shot me i wish someone would shoot me  
do you ever think of me? it’s not fair but i hope you do

12/25/13

Princess,

It’s Christmas. I always kind of thought I’d give you my mom’s sapphire ring this year. We would have lasted all of high school, we would have survived our first semester of college and still been together. 

I know we would’ve still been together, even though I was just going to Polis U, and you were headed off to Troit like a big-shot-smarty-pants. I know that we would have made it. 

I hope Raven got in, like you wanted her to, and that you’re roommates like you planned. I’m still friends with Jasper on Instagram--I saw him grinning like an idiot at MIT and making nerd-friends all semester. I’m so proud of him. He was scared to even apply, but you and Raven stood over his shoulder while he filled out the application, while Murphy and I ate pizza and I don’t know about Murphy, but I was wishing, wishing, wishing that I was as smart as Jasper.

Smart enough for you. 

Murphy and I felt like the slackers: you, Raven, and Jasper--you were fucking Harry Potter, the Golden Trio. 

Did Murphy go to school? I know he planned to apply to ACC. I worry about him. I know that sounds stupid, considering how we parted ways, but he needs something more. Especially with all three of you being gone. Sometimes I think I might text him, but he doesn’t want to hear from me. He loves you. Not sure if you realize that. He loves you and I stole you right out from under his nose. 

You probably don’t realize that, actually, and if I never send you this letter you’ll never know. He thinks he’s not good enough for you, and he’s right. But I wasn’t good enough, and you gave me a shot anyway. 

We both know how that turned out.

1/1/14

Clarke,

I’ve been listening to that song, The New Year, by Death Cab. I twinned it with This Place is a Prison and just set it on repeat. You had such good taste in angsty music, even if you could be a little pretentious sometimes. 

If we’re being honest, sometimes pretentious was your middle name. You’d stick your nose in the air about anything--about Van Gogh, about the latest Bright Eyes album, about the dress Harper wanted for prom--you know you really hurt her feelings, Clarke. She felt so self-conscious, she must have asked Jasper a thousand times if she looked okay. You didn’t even notice. Your dress was perfect, who cared about hers? I was mad at you about that, and you kept asking what was wrong--You were wrong, Clarke. You were wrong. 

Sometimes when I think about you I forget about your worst qualities. It’s easy to do because you had so many good ones. And you were empathetic, most of the time. But sometimes shit would just trip off of your tongue and I’d be pissed--embarrassed. You could hurt people so easily, you could be so cutting.

You usually used that on people who deserved it, but it was a lot harder to love you when you turned it on our friends. On me. 

But I still did love you.

I wish I knew that you would still love me, that you would sidestep my mistakes like I did yours. 

But then you never broke my arm. You just sometimes broke my heart. 

2/14/14

Princess,

I’m kinda exhausted. Are you working while you’re in school? Hope you’re not a waitress, this night was bullshit. Miller told me Mother’s Day is even worse, might be suddenly deathly ill that day. 

Saw a snap of you, Jasper, and Raven on his Instagram tonight. It was from Christmas, I think, you all looked punch-drunk, wearing stupid hats. Murphy must have been taking the picture, your hand is reached out like you can stop him. 

As if you’ve ever been able to stop Murphy from doing anything. Ugh, that time he wanted to jump off the swings? I think it must have been third grade. I remember you had blue ribbons in your hair and you were calling him “John” like you do when you’re pissed. “Get down off those swings, John! It’s not safe!” 

You had a lisp. Your front left tooth had fallen out. 

But in true Murphy style, instead of getting down he just let go. It was an epic soar, really, when I remember it. He broke his ankle, and all the way to the ambulance he was yelling, “Don’t call me John, Griffin! Don’t ever call me John!”

I wonder sometimes if you remember these things as vividly as I do. They’re like perfect, crystalline moments. I can see your pigtails tied with the blue ribbons, the way you hitch your hands up on your hips when you’re getting bossy. I remember that Murphy’s shirt had a rip at the collar. His dad had shaved his hair into a horrible buzz cut. And Raven and Jasper were in the sandbox like a pair of babies, intently building a structure that could survive a hurricane, and neither of them looked up until he was in the air.

God, he must have felt like Icarus, flying too high and falling too fast. 

I miss him, lately.

I miss you.

4/23/14

It’s been a year and I still see you crumpled at the bottom of the stairs when I try to fall asleep. 

I like Hennessy, lately. I can’t remember the last time I wasn’t at least slightly drunk. Miller says I need an intervention, but I pay my part of the rent, so when I tell him to shut up he does.

You tagged Jasper in a photo of you and a guy named Monty. Why? He doesn’t look like your type at all. 

I guess you never had time to have a type, though. Your type was always me. 

He looks sweeter, gentler. You probably need that. 

You look good. I like your haircut, the pink tips at the bottom. 

I stalked my way through old pictures of Jasper’s and found a ton of us. I never noticed, Clarke, but we were changing, the whole year before ~~your accident~~ ~~the incident~~ it happened. 

You kept saying I was drinking too much.

Now I know I was.

I don’t want to stop anymore, though. 

I don’t even know if I could.

5/27/14

princess I called your phone tonight just to hear it ring but I didn’t hang up in time and the way you sounded when you said hello broke me. I haven’t cried in ages but right now I feel like I might never stop. One day I’m going to be brave enough to say that I’m sorry but tonight’s not the night. I’m going to go do something dangerous and pretend like I’m alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh/Bright Eyes
> 
> Love your comments more than cherry Coke.


	3. I Do As I Please, I Lie Through My Teeth (someone might get hurt, but it won't be me)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Raven gets called out and doesn't like it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jasper and Raven really out here blowing things up and lighting things on fire in the shop building--and you know it wouldn't be any other way.

**_Clarke_ **

There is a bottle of aspirin on Clarke’s desk in the morning, and she’s never been more grateful. Raven must have left it--she knows how Clarke feels the morning after they drink Monty’s moonshine. Clarke doesn’t get nauseated or feel like she has the flu when she’s hungover, just a splitting headache that tempts her to show her class a movie instead of whatever was originally on her lesson plan. 

She might still show the movie, she thinks, as she pops three aspirin with a bottle of Vitamin Water and hopes for the best. 

Clarke’s been holding onto the Doctor Who episode _Vincent and The Doctor_ for a rough day, and this just might be it. Yeah, this is definitely it, she’s sure when her first period class streams in, still hyped over last night’s football game and yelling congratulations at the football players who took Clarke’s class for an easy A. 

(Joke’s on them. Clarke gives As out like candy, but only if you participate heavily.) 

When she leans to close her classroom door she catches a glimpse of Bellamy doing the same, feels his eyes on her, averts her own and rushes back to her desk.

“Okay,” she says, clapping her hands. “Okay, great job last night, football players! So proud of you. Today is going to be a low-key day--”

She pretends to grade papers while they watch the show, hoping no one notices that even though she’s holding her green pen (red is so angry-looking, she thinks) she’s not actually flipping through the stack of papers.The first-string linebacker is crying by the end of the episode, and Clarke can’t blame him. She gets a little choked up every time she watches it, too. 

She’s a little choked up, in any case, because Bellamy is so close, close as she needed him to be all those years ago, but he’s also impossibly far. His envelope sits in her drawer, under her phone. She thinks it’s not only a letter, but a spiral notebook--it’s far too heavy to simply be paper, and she can feel the spiral through the manila envelope. 

Bellamy has a list of sins at least ten years long, so maybe he needed a notebook’s length to encompass them.

Amends, what a stupid word, what a stupid way to put things. He needs more than amends. He needs surgeons and pins and wires and Clarke sobbing on Jasper’s shoulder the first time she tried to draw after she finally got the cast off. He needs the fireworks on her eighteenth birthday when Raven flapped around helplessly trying to convince Clarke to have a party and instead just the four of them sat under the showers of lights while tears leaked from Clarke’s eyes, and she tried to wipe them away with no one noticing but Murphy reached for her good hand and interlaced their fingers in the grass where Raven and Jasper couldn’t see. He needs bail money for Murphy two nights before Clarke and Raven left for college because Murphy spent all summer building up a head of steam about how alone he would be when they were gone. 

He needs to know that after Clarke, Murphy missed Bellamy the most, and that missing nearly killed the friend who was left behind.

Bellamy needs the support Clarke got from her friends when she realized she was bi and met Monty at the LGBTQ Student’s Association and for the very first time she felt seen, and she came out to them on a Facetime call and they all told her they were happy for her. He needs Christmas presents bought and hauled home every winter break, abstract art she finally figured out how to make with her left hand, he needs the hospital room the night Jasper was jumped outside a gay bar and Clarke flew on a red-eye to Logan to reach him, a ticket to attend her college graduation, and he needs, he absolutely needs, a front row seat to her decision to move back to Arkadia and teach Art at the high school. 

If Bellamy had those things, she could accept his amends. But he doesn’t have a single one, much less all, and Clarke could sit for hours and think of all the things Bellamy would have to have for her to forgive him but she can’t let herself do that. It makes her sad, and she needs to be angry instead. 

God, she’s trying so hard to be angry.

Raven comes hurrying in at lunch time, Jasper on her heels. “Just saw Bellamy headed for the cafeteria,” she says, pushing the classroom door closed. “Someone should warn him to bring lunch, but it won’t be me. He deserves to suffer through nasty chicken nuggets.”

“Hey,” Jasper objects, “chicken nugget day is the best.” 

Clarke gives a half-grin: “God, in some ways you’ll always be seventeen.” 

“Mmhmm. Know what this seventeen year old did with Monty last night?” Jasper raises an eyebrow at Clarke salaciously. 

Raven covers her ears, saying “la-la-la I can’t hear you!” in the same moment that Clarke rolls her eyes:

“Yeah I saw you go into his room. Thank GOD I knocked out from the moonshine shortly after.” She turns her gaze to Raven: “And I don’t know what you’re acting so innocent for, you had your tongue down Murphy’s throat before you even got into the hallway. Did you go back to your place, or his?”

Raven straightens her shirt. “We’re good friends who sometimes...work out our stress. And we went back to my place. He has like four roommates.” 

“You’ve been working out your stress so often lately you should probably just ask him to move in,” Jasper says around a forkful of lasagna. “And don’t think Clarke and I missed you holding his hand at the game.”

Clarke reaches across her desk to wipe bolognese sauce from the corner of his mouth.

Raven grumbles: “Can’t a girl and a guy who’ve been friends their whole lives have a casual sexual relationship?” 

“Not without confessing all to the other guy and girl who’ve been friends their whole lives,” Clarke chews a chunk of pineapple. “I just want you two to be careful. And kind to each other.”

“Were you careful and kind when you slept with him?” Raven’s a little mad, and Clarke can’t blame her, they’re prying.

“That was different!” Clarke cries defensively. “That just happened!”

“This just happened, too!” 

Jasper doesn’t like it when they fight, and his eyes dart from one woman to the other, until he finally says, “Raven, c’mon. This didn’t just happen. Ever since we all got back--four years--you’ve been dancing around each other. And it’s been months since you started _working out your stress with him_. It’s time to admit you guys are in a real relationship, not just having casual sex sometimes.”

“It’s not up to you to decide when we admit it. We’re going at our own pace. And you’re being nosy and fucking annoying, both of you!” Raven snatches her lunch, stomps out of the classroom with her head held high. Then Clarke hears, “Get out of my fucking way, Bellamy!” 

Clarke spares a moment of pity for anyone who gets in Raven’s way for the rest of the day--including Bellamy. 

Until he pokes his head through the open door and says, “You guys okay?” With his eyes wide, searching, and sympathetic. 

Clarke snarls, “If we weren’t, it’s not like we’d tell you,” and he nods, disappearing without another word. 

Jasper’s eyes are liquid: “Clarke, don’t you think--”

“No,” she says, but in an altogether softer tone for Jasper. “No, I don’t think so. He can be in that classroom all he wants, but I don’t have to talk to him and we don’t have to be friends.”

Jasper stretches his hand across Clarke’s desk, reaches for her tapping fingers. “Listen, it’s up to you, and I’m not going to pressure you, okay? But the last eight years of your life has been shadowed by what happened with Bellamy. Every time you were happy, you could have been happier. Everything you did, you wished it was with him. You think you hid that from us, but you couldn’t. And I just want you to consider how much more at peace you could be if you read his stupid letter and just tried to start forgiving him.”

Clarke shakes her head.

Jasper sighs. “We were only kids when it happened, Clarke. Think of how young seventeen and eighteen year olds seem to us now.”

Lunch is almost over, and she’s grateful. If anything could convince her to reach out to Bellamy, it’d be the infinite sadness on Jasper’s face right now. She squeezes his hand: “I won’t be angry with you, if you want to forgive him.”

Jasper shrugs. “He hasn’t approached me, yet, but then, I was never as angry as the rest of you.”

“It’s not in your nature,” Clarke tells him. “And I really love that about you.”

The warning bell rings, and Jasper grabs his lunchbox. He has to run across campus to the outlying building that houses the chem room and Raven’s shop warehouse. Principal Diyoza once said to Clarke jokingly that it’s separate from the rest of the school in case Raven accidentally lights something on fire, but it was Jasper who exploded a beaker and singed his eyebrows off last year. Clarke remembers carefully dabbing ointment on all the little cuts on his face, grateful no students had been hurt. 

Jasper wears goggles for every experiment now. 

“I’ll smooth things over with Raven during my planning period,” he tosses over his shoulder, “but hey, think about what I said, okay?” 

Clarke nods even though she has absolutely no intention of thinking about forgiving Bellamy.

He can rot in that damn history classroom, as far as she’s concerned. 

It is one of those little quirks of fate, then, that brings Principal Diyoza to Clarke’s room during her planning period, dragging Bellamy behind her, and smiling like the cat who got the canary. 

“I know that since we decided to expand the Art Club to the Fine Arts Club, it’s really been too much for you, Clarke--”

“I never said that!” Clarke protests hotly, even though she has said so--privately, to Raven and Jasper, on multiple occasions. She thinks fleetingly of Lexa, who had convinced her to suggest the change to Art Club in the first place, and curses her a little bit. 

“I reached out to the usual suspects, but they’re so busy--then I had a brilliant thought. Mr. Blake here, the newest member of our staff, has quite an affinity for Art History, as well as a specialty in creative writing. He’s the perfect person to help you with this, Clarke.”

Repeating that she doesn’t need help will only make her look sullen and uncooperative and make her principal suspect she’s not a team player, so Clarke plasters a smile to her face and does her best acting: “Wow, that sounds absolutely perfect. We have that weekly expert hour and I could definitely use another pair of eyes.” Clarke studiously doesn’t look at Bellamy, but she knows his shoulders relax a little.

You’d think that when you haven’t seen a man in eight years, you would’ve forgotten things about him, you would’ve lost track of the little moments you see out of the corner of your eye: the way he covers a sigh, the way he runs a shaking hand through his hair.

But what’s eight years on eighteen? Clarke knows Bellamy as well as she knows herself. Even after all this time, she could find the scar on his lip in a pitch black room, a reminder of the time he challenged Raven to a dirtbike race and ended up with a face full of gravel. 

There is so much about Bellamy Blake that she tried to forget for years, and maybe that’s part of the reason she’s furious with him. No cell of her body could forget, no tiny portion of her brain could be a retreat. 

_We were only kids_ , Jasper had said, and he’s right, but some part of Clarke will always be that seventeen year old girl, calling, “Bellamy, stop!” 

It will always be three days after senior prom.

They will have always had that fight.

He’ll always slug Murphy. 

She’ll always be backing up and begging them not to quit.

And Bellamy will always, always, end up knocking her down the stairs. 

Her wrist will always get shattered, her arm broken in three places, bone sticking grimly through the skin. 

_We were only kids_ , but somehow Clarke is still that kid, always that kid, forever that kid. 

When she looks at him all she can see is the empty spot next to her bedside when she woke up in the hospital after surgery. Jasper, Raven, and Murphy were there, had been there all night, but Bellamy was gone and he never came back. 

It was only an accident--though a drunken accident caused by Bellamy’s foul temper when he’d had too much-- and Clarke has always known this, but what she resents, what she really resents, is Bellamy abandoning her to recover on her own. 

Diyoza’s making her excuses, wishing them luck, and in seconds she disappears and Clarke’s left standing with Bellamy. He tries to smile at her but she’s having none of it: “This doesn’t change anything,” she snaps. “You can help the writing kids and I’ll help the art kids. We don’t need to talk. Expert Hour is from 6-9 every Thursday on a drop-in basis.”

“That’s more like Expert Three Hours.”

It’s a joke, but she refuses to laugh, instead sneers: “Well, I know firsthand how busy you are sometimes, Mr. Blake, so if you’re otherwise engaged for the next eight years, I understand. The kids don’t need you. I don’t need you.”

Bellamy looks like she’s punched him in the gut, and then he whispers, “Yeah, I deserve that.”

“If you tell me you’re going to be there, you’d better be there, Bellamy.”

“I’ll be there,” his posture is rigid as he heads for the hall and she shouldn’t shouldn’t shouldn’t but calls at his back:

“What if I’d been dead, or paralyzed? People break their necks falling down the stairs all the time. You just left without knowing I was okay.”

He doesn’t turn around, but she can see the shame write letters across his body language: “I waited til the ambulance left. They said you were alright, a concussion probably, and then your arm.”

Clarke’s laugh is hollow: “What a shitty definition of okay. It didn’t occur to you that I might need your help recovering from an injury like that?”

“I didn’t think you’d want to see me,” he’s half-turned now.

“Well, I fucking did! Why didn’t you ask me?!”

“Clarke,” he says, patience wearing thin, “I wrote you a letter. You can read it and know the answer to these questions.”

She can't help goading him, pushing him. 

“I’m not going to. I won’t! I don’t want to forgive you, Bellamy. You left me in the worst position of my life and you never came back, after you told me you loved me every day for four years. You broke me so hard I’ve never been able to put myself back together, but I found some semblance of normalcy and here you come, walking in, asking for forgiveness and making amends...I’m furious with you. How dare you?”

“I was eighteen, Clarke!” Oh yeah, now she’s pushed a button, and it feels good. “I was eighteen and drunk and I knocked my girlfriend down the stairs like an abuser--like my dad!”

“And I was seventeen! You’re not the only one whose youth was robbed that night! Christ!”

She’s kind of disappointed when the bell rings and he makes a guttural noise, pulling at his hair and stalking back to his own classroom. 

It only took her a day to rope him into a screaming match, and Clarke’s proud of that, in a strange way. 

She’s going to hell, but she’ll damn well drag Bellamy Blake down with her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Take It Easy (Love Nothing)/Bright Eyes
> 
> Bellamy's letters should be up later tonight!
> 
> Jasper and Clarke make me so soft, I just love them. 
> 
> Love your comments more than Philly Cheesesteaks.


	4. Love's an Excuse to Get Hurt (do you like to hurt?)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More letters from Bellamy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This boy just plumb breaks my heart.

_**Bellamy** _

8/30/14

Princess,

It’s been a little while since I wrote but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about you. All summer I’ve been seeing your pictures on Jasper’s Insta, all summer I’ve wanted to be there. Feels like you must have had so much to share after your freshman year, wish I knew the feeling, wish I could be there too. 

I’m still working at the restaurant, I’ve moved from Hennessy to Jim Beam. Miller watches me with guarded eyes, the way you did that last year. Like anything could set me off, like anything could make me lash out. 

I don’t lash out like I did before, though. I learned my lesson with you. I’ve gotten my drinking down to an art. 

I know exactly where to stop.

11/24/14

Clarke, 

God, I hate Thanksgiving. What’s there for me to be thankful for? Missing my mom and O? Knowing they’re in a paprika-and-pumpkin scented kitchen without me, roasting a turkey, baking homemade rolls? 

What about you? Did you go home for the week, did either of your parents cook? I remember all the years you came to our place, or went to Jasper’s. It isn’t your mom’s fault she’s a terrible cook, I guess, but she could order catering. She could try.

I know I used to tell you that she loves you when you cried over her criticism or her neglect, but here’s the truth, Princess: I think your mom’s awful, and I’m glad you had mine. 

I hope you still see my mom sometimes, I hope you’re not mad at her or O for what happened. All the mistakes I made were mine, but I’m sure you know that.

I tell myself you know that all the time. 

2/7/15

Princess, I met this girl.

No one could ever be you, but I can’t have you, so I have to meet other people, right? Anyway, I met this girl, her name’s Roma. She’s nothing like you and a lot like you all in the same breath, and I don’t like the way that feels, but I like how she makes me feel so here we are. 

She drinks like I do and drives like I do and we’re both just a little out of control and it feels good to be out of control with someone instead of out of control while someone watches and worries and cries. 

I don’t know if that makes sense and if it does, I do know it’s not fair. 

It’s been almost two years and sometimes I have to think about the things I hated about you just so I can kiss Roma’s lips and not feel sick with betrayal. Did you know you always corrected my grammar? Did you know that if I asked for help with something you’d just reach over and do it instead of telling me how? Did you know you have a habit of jumping to Jasper’s defense, mean as a snake, even when he’s wrong? That last one’s a doozy, sometimes I think you’d kill for Jasper without a second thought. 

What I wouldn’t give to still have that kind of loyalty in my corner, though. 

4/23/15

Two years, Princess, and I still hate myself. Roma brought pills tonight and I’ve never tried anything like that before, hope it’ll be enough to get you off my mind. 

I still love you, and I hate you for it. 

I just hate myself a little more.

7/4/15

i don’t miss her but roma’s gone. i don’t know what i was thinking, like i’ve ever been with a wild drugged out mess of a girl in my life. when i met you i knew that i was always gonna want a put together intelligent going places girl like you princess and it’s been so long since i saw you wish i could come home wish i knew you’d be there wish i’d knew you’d forgive me and raven’d have an idea on how to fix this noise the camaro’s been making and murphy i wish he’d know that i’m sorry and i was just mad that night just mad just madjustmadmjustmad  
the fireworks tonight remind me of jasper and seventh grade when we set them off in his backyard and nearly burned his house down and i want that again want that feeling want that life want that you.  
princess when’s this gonna be over when can i come home? 

10/25/15

Princess,

Talked to my mom tonight. It was awful. She begged me to come home. She said she knew that you would forgive me, that she’s seen you a few times and you’re more hurt that I left than you are mad that I made you fall. 

Here’s the problem, Clarke, I don’t deserve to be forgiven for either of those things, and every time I think about coming home I remember your pale face turned up to the ceiling and how you looked dead, dead--how in that moment I knew I’d just done the worst thing I’d ever do--and I don’t deserve any more than that the misery of that moment. I just don’t.

Maybe someday I will, but I don’t have the strength to try for that. Not yet. 

12/24/15

Clarke,

Holidays are the worst. 

Miss you, love you.

Sick of thinking of you.

Oh, lookie there, Chief Miller’s spiced eggnog helped me ~~right~~ write a poem.

12/26/15

Clarke,

Did you go to Jasper’s for Christmas? I saw his pictures of you and Monty--that guy again--in your Christmas jammies. You’re always at your prettiest in the morning, hair all rumpled, eyes half closed. Lucky Monty, to see you that way.

12/26/15--11:26PM

Uh okay I just saw Jasper’s insta story and I’m both an idiot and a dick--Monty’s gay. Of course he’s gay. I hope he and Jasper are good for each other. 

1/5/16

Princess,

Miller’s dad says I should get my GED, and I think I should go for it. I wish I could ask you what you think but the rational part of my brain knows that of course you’d say to do it. You’d say I could rock it.

You always had so much faith in me. 

4/2/16

was supposed to take my GED test today and got drunk instead i’m nobody going nowhere so who needs the damn test? think i might just cry about it sometimes cause i used to be your man and you used to tell me things were gonna work out and you said no matter what we could stick together and we could be that couple who made it through everything  
you said we’d be the one-in-a-million but instead we’re just like every other high school couple who broke up except i nearly killed you first.  
i’m just a self sabotaging narcissistic sonofabitch and nothing is going to change that so i don’t need my ged or college or the way i thought i might major in history and you’d look at me and you’d say bellamy, i think you’d be such a good teacher and your mouth, oh god, clarke your mouth so close to mine.  
still miss you still can’t breathe drinking johnnie walker these days and barely getting by.

5/12/16 

Hey Princess,

Your sophomore year’s almost up and I hope it went well. Saw you, Raven and Jasper on Insta over Spring Break. Can’t believe you went to Daytona, seems a little beneath you, or at least the way you see yourself. 

That was unkind, but I feel unkind today.

Do you ever think that we never had a choice? We were always destined to be exquisitely happy and then excruciatingly unhappy? We loved each other so much, for so long, and then it was all stolen right out from under us. 

I guess the fates didn’t do that.

I guess I did. 

7/4/16

Princess, tonight I watched the fireworks with a six-pack and thought of you. Went through all the pictures on my phone, and I had some going back to when we were twelve. There were so many of the five of us, but I couldn’t stop looking at the ones of just me and you. You can almost mark the instant I started drinking in earnest, it’s right there. And you can mark the moment you stopped trusting me, your face getting darker, that turn to your mouth in the corners that meant you were unhappy.

I say that I ruined your life the night ~~I pushed you~~ ~~of the accident~~ when you fell but I went through those pictures I could see that you were unhappy long before then. 

I wish you’d told me.

Or did you tell me and I wasn’t listening?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Lover I Don't Have to Love/Bright Eyes
> 
> Writing these letters and thinking of Bellamy circling the drain just breaks my little author-ly heart. 
> 
> Love your comments more than Sonic Ocean Water Slushes.


	5. It's Too Hard to Belong to Someone Who is Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Octavia and Clarke discuss forgiveness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I totally made Expert Hour up when I was trying to think of activities an art teacher and a history teacher could ostensibly do together, but the more I think about it the more I kinda dig it. Like drop-in homework help, but for The Arts! I was a total writing nerd in high school--my lawd, the poems--and I would definitely have loved something like Expert Hour.

_**Clarke** _

Clarke was lying to herself when she thought she could ignore the guy in the classroom across from hers, and it’s starting to piss her off. He shows up for Expert Hour with a laptop bag and three tupperware containers full of gluten free chocolate chip cookies. When he asks if she thinks there’s enough to go around she nods and points him to a table. How he found out that they bring snacks every week, she’s not sure, but someone in this damn school is being nice to him and when Clarke finds out who she’s going to make their life hell--

Bellamy wants to know where he should sit or if he _should_ sit and she gestures towards the bleachers where the writing kids always congregate in little groups of 3 or 4, comparing stories and essays, waiting for Clarke to struggle her way to them and give their work an adult, but not exactly _expert_ eye. “Some of them have brought copies of their college essays, so I really hope you weren’t exaggerating your skills to Diyoza,” Clarke says snippily. 

_You were never any good at writing when I knew you_ , she thinks, but doesn’t say so. A way with words sometimes, certainly, but no tendency to apply it. No love poems from Bellamy. An occasional note but certainly never a love letter, and Clarke herself bent over every important assignment or essay Bellamy ever had from sixth grade onward. She used to sigh sometimes over their combined homework--especially in high school when she was doing AP work and he was struggling to pull Bs in his regular courses. “You’re smarter than this,” she used to tell him. As an adult with an education degree and several years of classroom experience, she realizes now that he had ADHD, and she’s irritated that none of the adults in Bellamy’s life realized that. Maybe he would have been different if school hadn’t been so hard, maybe he wouldn’t have had so much to be angry about, and maybe he would have never started drinking. 

Well, that last bit is silly. Teenagers drink. But he wouldn’t have started drinking so heavily, maybe, and it wouldn’t have spiraled so far out of control. 

Bellamy’s mom used to say “if wishes were horses then beggars would ride,” and Clarke falls back on that whenever she finds herself speculating on how different things could have been if only, if only, if only--

The writing kids must be picking up on Clarke’s distrustful attitude towards Bellamy because when he sits near them, all casual, open body language, and pulls out a laptop, none of the kids say a word to him. Madi, working on a canvas near him, eyes Clarke questioningly. The Ms. Griffin Madi is familiar with is kind, friendly. This Ms. Griffin is acting like a snotty teenager. 

This Ms. Griffin _feels_ like a snotty teenager. 

It’s with a large dose of irritation that Clarke decides she’ll introduce some of the kids to Bellamy, and at that very moment Charlotte slips in. She’s a slim junior with ash blonde hair and a heaping helping of angst on her shoulders at all times, and she's an incredibly talented poet and songwriter. Clarke yanks on her hoodie as she tries to sneak past and find her friends. “Charlie,” she says, because that’s what Charlotte likes to be called, recently, “I want to introduce you to someone.”

Charlie loves Clarke, but she’s a snarky creature and never holds back: “Well, I don’t wanna be introduced to anyone, Ms. Griffin, so thanks but no thanks. I’ve got all the friends I need.”

“Gosh, isn’t that tragic?” Clarke is nearly dragging the teen across the room. “You’re getting introduced whether you like it or not, kid.” 

Clarke deposits Charlie in front of Bellamy’s amused eyes. “Charlie, this is Mr. Blake. He’s the new history teacher, and he’s also apparently a writer. He’ll be helping out with EH when he can.” Charlie scrunches her eyebrows together, mouths the word _apparently_ to herself. “Mr. Blake, this is Charlotte Baker, known as Charlie. She’s a very talented poet, and she’s working on a poem to enter in a nationwide contest. It comes along with a pretty hefty scholarship, so it’s really important she gets it just right.”

Bellamy looks up at Clarke, something knowing in his expression. “No pressure, though?” 

“You’ve never put any pressure on yourself before,” Clarke snaps, “why’d this be any different?” 

Charlie’s eyes are huge as she glances from one teacher to the other, and then she exchanges glances with Madi, standing only a few feet away. 

Bellamy looks like he might say more--looks like he has a retort--but instead he turns to Charlie with a smile. “Why don’t you sit here, Charlie? I happen to love poetry, but there’s not a lot of chances to flex your poetic muscles when you teach history.” 

Charlie looks at him as if he’s slightly insane: “Why don’t you just write for yourself? I do, all the time. I feel like I’d go nuts if I didn’t.” 

“I do write for myself, just not usually poetry. Someone made me feel like I was too old for it, once, and it gave me a complex.” 

“You can never be too old for shit that comes from your soul, like poetry, or music.”

“Language, Charlie,” Clarke reminds her, and she tunes out Bellamy’s answer as she walks towards Madi. “You needed me, Madi?”

“I...uh...hold on, the light’s better over here,” Madi stammers, dragging her easel ten feet to the right. Then a whisper: “Ms. Griffin, why do you hate Mr. Blake so much? Should I hate him too?” 

_Yes_ , Clarke thinks, _hate him so he can’t let you down and break your heart_ , but out loud she says, “he hasn’t done anything to hurt you, Madi, so no, you shouldn’t hate him.”

“I can hate him on your behalf,” Madi says loyally. “Like stupid Atom, he broke Octavia’s heart, so we all hate him.” 

Clarke’s brain hits a hard reset button. “Wait, he did? I just talked to her two weeks ago and they were--is she okay?” 

Madi shrugs. “Not at first. She cried SO much, eyeliner everywhere, we had to totally redo her makeup in the girls’ bathroom at lunch. But there’s a senior, Jason Levitt? And he asked Charlie if Octavia had a boyfriend during first period the next day and he is a LOT hotter than Atom so Octavia’s feeling better about the whole thing and um, tomorrow at the Homecoming Dance we’re all pretty sure he’s gonna ask her out.”

“Fuck me,” Clarke moans in a whisper, “I forgot tomorrow’s Homecoming.” 

“Language, Ms. Griffin,” Madi chides. “Um, isn’t Octavia Mr. Blake’s sister? You’re always so nice to her. So you love her, but hate him?” 

“It’s complicated. And none of your business. And I think you need some contrast color here,” Clarke motions to a spot on Madi’s painting, “and here too.”

“Octavia hates him too. If you both hate him, that’s all I need to know, and I’ll tell Charlie--”

“No, Madi.” Clarke’s voice is sharper than intended. “I can’t give Charlie the help she needs on her writing, and he says he can. So just let it...let it go.”

“Octavia said he keeps telling her he’s sorry for the things he did. Has he said that to you? When I was little my mom said I always have to forgive my brother when he says he’s sorry. It’s part of the sibling contract, she says. But when I told Octavia that, she called me a baby. She said, some things are bigger than I’m sorry.” Madi’s searching Clarke’s face, looking for clues. 

“Octavia’s right about that,” Clarke says grimly. “But I’m sure your mom is also right, most of the time. I’m an only child, though, so it’s hard for me to understand.” 

“If I ask Octavia, will she know why you’re mad at her brother? Is it the same reason she is?”

“It isn’t her story to tell, Madi. Please, I don’t want to talk about this any more,” unexpectedly, Clarke’s voice threatens toward tears, and she walks quickly away and into the hall before the kids can see her cry. 

Octavia’s in the hall, dithering in front of the doors, and Clarke nearly crashes right into her. “Clarke, oh, thank God. Can you tell my brother I walked home?”

“I don’t want to talk to him any more than you do!” Clarke doesn’t mean to raise her voice, but oh Lord, she’s so sick of Bellamy Blake tonight. “Oh God, I’m sorry, Octavia, I’m just having a rough day.”

Octavia stares at her through what seems like a pound of eyeliner and then another of lip gloss. “I know. This’s gotta be horrible for you. At least you weren’t stuck in the house with him while he looked for an apartment, though. He’s all calling me O like I’m a little girl and it’s been eight years! I’m not little anymore! And I hate that nickname!” 

“I call you O sometimes,” Clarke points out. 

“That’s different. You earned it. You’ve been here all along. If I needed something I could rely on you.” 

Clarke pulls Octavia into a hug. “I’m sorry, I know this is really hard on you. If you need an escape, call me. You can come to my place. And Bellamy told me about your mom, O, that’s just fucking awful.” 

“If I dropped the f-bomb you’d totally say ‘language, Ms. Blake’ so...language, Ms. Griffin.” Octavia gives a little sniff. “Bellamy says that when Mom, um, when she--that he’s gonna be my guardian and I’ll have to do what he says--”

“Oh, Octavia, I’m sure he’ll try to keep your life as much the same as it is right now.”

“I want it to be the same as it was when he was _gone_ ,” she says, a little shriek on the last word, and behind her Clarke can hear someone make a tiny, hurt noise. Without letting go of Octavia, Clarke turns her face to see Bellamy framed by the gym’s open double doors. His hand makes a clawing gesture at his heart, and he spins blindly back into the gym and towards the bleachers. “He left me and my mom and you and he was gone for eight years! I don’t know why he thinks he can come back now and say he’s sorry and everything will just be okay! It’s not okay!”

Clarke has held many a teenage girl in crisis, but she’s never identified quite so strongly with the feelings being poured out.

“I know. You know I know.”

“He told me he wants to make up for the things he did wrong. Is he gonna make up for pushing you down the stairs, Clarke? Is he gonna throw himself down the stairs?” 

Clarke freezes. She’s never told Octavia about the accident, and has no idea how she found out. 

“That was an accident. I don’t expect him to make up for that specific incident. And the truth is, no one can truly make up for their past actions. That’s why we always have to be careful about what we say and do. But your brother wants to make a new start with you. You should let him. You’re going to need each other.” 

“Are you going to let him?” Octavia peels back to study Clarke’s face. “I can tell by your expression that you’re not. Don’t be a hypocrite, Clarke.”

Clarke tucks Octavia’s thick dark hair behind her ear. “That’s fair enough. But do you know the phrase ‘do as I say, not as I do?’ “

“You’re not that person, who says that kind of shit.” Octavia straightens, shifts her backpack. “Please tell him I walked home. I really can’t face him now.” 

“It’s dark--”

“I walked home in the dark a thousand times before he came back, and I can walk home in the dark now that he’s here.”

Clarke nods, lip caught between her teeth. “I’ll see you tomorrow, at the dance?”

“You’re gonna dress up, right?” Octavia has a light in her face, “you always have the best costumes.”

“What’s the theme?” Clarke thought she was going to sit on the couch and drink wine tomorrow night, but she signed up to chaperone Homecoming the first week of school. 

“Fifties. I just got my Pink Ladies jacket in the mail, and it’s killer looking.”

“I’m pretty sure I have a poodle skirt somewhere,” Clarke assures Octavia. “Get home, it’s late.”

Bellamy’s bent over a student on the third bleacher, and Clarke can hear the even rumble of his voice even from the other side of the gym. She calls out a fifteen minute warning, and her art students clamor as they fold up the easels and carry their canvases down the hall to Clarke’s classroom. Charlie dumps her notebooks into her bag and bolts for the door, pausing to give Clarke a shining smile. “Ms. Griffin, I think this is the best thing I’ve ever written. Mr. Blake really helped.”

“Oh, great,” Clarke tries to match her smile, “I can’t wait to read it.” 

Madi whispers, “What did you say to Mr. Blake in the hall? He came back in looking like he might cry.” 

_And he’d deserve that_ , Clarke thinks, but out loud she says, “stop being so nosy, Madi, jeez louise.”

After the last teen has been shooed away, Clarke leans over the snack table, affixing the lids to the snacks she brought, then stacking them carefully on the bottom bleacher to flip the tables over and fold their legs in. She’s been doing it by herself all semester, but now Bellamy is silent next to her, helping. She’s caught between telling him to go away, she can do it herself, and wanting to continue giving him the cold shoulder. 

“Is O in the hallway?” he asks finally, after the last table is stowed and he and Clarke are ready to turn out the lights. 

“Oh...no, she wanted me to tell you she was going to walk home.” Clarke strides purposefully ahead of him and he says indignantly to her back:

“But it’s dark!” 

“And this is Arkadia. And she lives less than a mile from the school. It’s perfectly safe, Bellamy, or I wouldn’t have let her.” 

“Let her? She’s not your responsibility--that’s not your place.”

Clarke turns on her heel. “You fucking kidding me, Bellamy? She’s been my responsibility since she was eight years old. You know, when you left her? I’ve been looking out for that girl for half her life. I’ve gotten her out of trouble, I’ve driven her home when she was drunk, I’ve picked her up from a date gone wrong and I check on her at school often as I can. ‘Cause, in case you forgot, you weren’t here to do it.”

He holds up his hand like he’s gathering his thoughts, but she cuts him off: “Just because you decided, finally, to roll back into town? That doesn’t mean Octavia’s going to accept you trying to take care of her or look out for her. She doesn’t trust you, Bellamy, because you abandoned her when she was a little girl. You’re going to have to do a lot more work than saying you’re sorry and offering to drive her home when it’s convenient for you.” 

She walks ahead of him again, but he doesn’t follow this time. “Clarke,” he calls, “Clarke, please.”

She hopes he can see her shaking her head in the dark. 

The days when his voice affected her aren’t completely gone, but she can keep walking, now. 

It was an entirely different story when she was sixteen. 

“Clarke, I don’t know what to do.” 

It’s the hitch on the last word that breaks her, and twenty feet down the hall she finally stops, sighing. 

Only the emergency lights in the hall light up his face, but she can see the tears sitting just under his eyes, and she hates him a little bit, because they make her heart ache. 

“What is it that you need from me? You want me to tell your sister to forget that you just disappeared one night and never came back? Because I can’t make her do that. I can’t do that for myself and Bellamy, I would, if I could, I’d forget it. I’d look at you in that damn classroom and I’d be thrilled to have you next to me. But there’s no band-aid big enough for the way you hurt your sister, and the way you hurt me. So you’re going to have to fight for her forgiveness.” 

“What about you? Can I fight for yours?”

“I don’t think it’s in the cards.”

“Clarke, I wrote you.” His voice cracks again.

“I know, you wrote me a fucking letter, you wanted to make amends.” Clarke is so bored by this concept. 

“No, I wrote you. I wrote you dozens of letters, not one, the whole time I was gone I wrote you. Sometimes I was drunk and sometimes I was sober but I wrote and I begged you and I told you why I couldn’t come home.” 

She approaches him quickly, suddenly close to his face: “You couldn’t come home because you got drunk. You got drunk probably a hundred times and you became something ugly every fucking time. Just like your father. And then, Bellamy, what was always going to happen, happened--you were too drunk, and you started in on me with that mean shit you used to say, and Murphy got mad and you started to fight and I begged you to stop and you dragged your arm back to hit him but you caught me, instead, and I fell down the stairs.” She’s told some people the story--therapists--but never so succinctly, never in such an ugly tone. “I fell down the stairs, and when the ambulance left, you packed some of your things and you left, too. You never came to the hospital, and you never called. That is why you couldn’t come home, and there’s no other excuse, no other reason. So you might’ve written me hundreds of letters, Bellamy, but if you think I’m gonna understand--” and she can’t be more than three inches from his face, now--”I’m never gonna understand.”

He touches her face, fingers soft over her jaw. “I see you in my nightmares, at the bottom of the stairs.”

“Good,” she spits, pushing his hand away. “I hope you dream about that moment forever. Because you tried to leave it behind, Bellamy, and I had to live it.” 

Clarke leaves him there, in the hall, alone with tear tracks down his face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's nothing like writing a HUGE long note and then when you hit preview, everything disappears. 
> 
> So lemme see if I can remember it all: 
> 
> Chapter Title: Make War/Bright Eyes (this was on repeat for me when my first super-serious relationship ended)
> 
> So the truth of what happened that night is out. I know some of y'all were trying to decide whose "side" you were on. Now that we know what really happened, and that it was the result of a pattern of behavior, Clarke's anger and hurt seems really justified, huh?
> 
> I actually cannot wait to talk more about Bellamy's father and about the series of events that led to Bellamy becoming an alcoholic. 
> 
> The next "Clarke" chapter has Clarke and Bellamy chaperoning the Homecoming Dance, and Octavia getting to know Jason Levitt. 
> 
> How do y'all like my junior delinquents?! We've got Atom, Octavia, Madi, Levitt, and Charlie already, and I've also got Jordan tucked up my sleeve. These six are going to cause a lot of mischief for our teachers! 
> 
> Bellamy's letters will be up within the next couple of hours, and for anyone reading Darling, I'm halfway through that chapter too! I had all three of them open on my laptop, typing away today! Darling will be up by tomorrow afternoon for sure, I swear. Hell, maybe I'll get insomnia and it'll go up at 2AM. Who knows? I'm a mercurial creature. 
> 
> I love your comments more than Trader Joe's and y'all, that's a LOT.


	6. I Know the Cost, and I Wanna Stop (but I just can't do it)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy's letters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are some mentions of both physical and emotional abuse. I warned y'all, but I love you so you get another caution.

_**Bellamy** _

9/23/16

Clarke, 

The summer after 8th grade your mom let you get a bikini.

No, this isn’t a pervy letter, you don’t have to worry. Not that you’re reading this anyway, though I sometimes pretend you are or you will. It’s not pervy at all, just a memory I had in a flash today when I walked by the pool. It’s still hot as hell here in Austin, still feels like the middle of July, and the scent of chlorine brought your face to mind so clearly I thought I could touch you.

I would have killed to touch you.

But anyway, she let you get a bikini and Raven and I, we thought you’d chicken out of wearing it, we actually bet on it. But instead you chose a turquoise one, and we watched you shed your dress and cannonball into the pool, so self-assured. Murphy shook the surprise off his face and followed you in—he’d follow you into hell, that one—and I remember raising my eyebrows at Raven and Jasper held out his palm for our allowance money and I said to Raven: remind me to never bet against Clarke again. 

Raven jumped on my shoulders later and demanded a chicken fight and I still remember you rising out of the water on Murphy’s shoulders like some kind of fucking Venus and I think I knew right then that I’d always been in love with you and I’d always BE in love with you. 

If you ever wonder why that summer was a turning point for us it wasn’t the bikini, but it was the way you put it on like armor and the way you shed your dress like it was childhood and you didn’t need it anymore. 

So confident, Princess. So bare and so new. How could I resist? 

9/30/16

Clarke,

I didn’t want to say anything until I officially did it, but I got my GED and I enrolled in Austin Community College and I’ve now had a week of classes. I don’t deserve to be proud of myself but I am, I’m so proud of myself. I had a beer with my new roommate but I didn’t drink too much. She knows I’m a fuckup but we have a deal, we don’t judge each other. She brings home a million one night stands and I drink too much and we’re content with each knowing the other sucks too. 

Her name’s Niylah. I think that’s really pretty. 

Don’t get any ideas, though, we’re not sleeping together--she’s gay. I know I never really said a lot about Jasper when we were kids, but I kind of wish I’d been more supportive. It wasn’t like he ever had to come out. We always knew, and I think that whether you realize it or not it had a lot to do with why you were always so viciously protective of him. 

I try not to blame you for all the times we fought because of Jasper. You were always in his corner and I admire you for that. But sometimes I needed you to be in my corner instead. And Princess, I know you were, most of the time, but if it was a choice between me and him? You’d bare your teeth like a mama tiger. I always knew if we ever did have one of those active shooters we were always practicing for, if they came for Jasper you’d put your body in front of his and we’d be having your memorial. 

Christ, why am I having such morbid thoughts? I’m excited, Princess. I’m excited and I wish I could share this with you. 

Sometimes I think I could just pick up my phone and call you and tell you I’m sorry, for a start, and we could go from there. But I know I owe you so much more than that. When I’m different, Clarke, when I’m better, when I’m grown--because I’m slowly realizing that I am so much younger than I ever knew--maybe I can tell you I’m sorry and I can show you who I am. Maybe we’ll still be in love or we can fall in love again. I think I’m still in love with you but the more time goes on the more I think you might just be a ghost I’ll chase forever. 

No. Not forever. Because Clarke, I’m gonna show you I’m better, someday. 

12/01/16

hey princess,

The semester’s nearly over and I’m not gonna fail any of my classes, so, I’m pretty thrilled about that. One of my professors suggested I take his creative writing course next semester, and I thought that was cool. I couldn’t make it work with my schedule, so I told him maybe next year and he seemed a little disappointed. I didn’t think my writing in his class was that great, and I don’t have you over my shoulder anymore pinpointing the wrong words and misspellings, but he said, and I quote, “There’s a spark here, Mr. Blake, you can have a very pretty turn of phrase, when you want to.” 

I’m not sure how that pretty turn of phrase will benefit me when I want to teach history, but hey, I’ll keep it in mind. 

Niylah helps me sometimes. It’s hard to focus, so she sets a timer, and I work for that long, then take what she refers to as a “brain break” -- look at Insta, or watch thirty minutes of a show, that kind of thing. She says I probably have ADHD but I don’t have insurance so I can’t afford to go to the doctor or pay for the prescription. 

Having ADHD makes a lot of sense, and it explains the frustration I used to feel when you wanted me to work on homework for hours without a break. You can do that, Princess, you’re extraordinarily focused. But I needed a brain break, and I didn’t know how to tell you that. I’m sorry I got mad. I’m sorry I got mean. 

I would do anything to take back some of the things I said to you. You know your intelligence is something that attracted me to you. I never should have weaponized it the way I did. You, Raven, and Jasper are still the smartest people I’ve ever known, even now. 

You’re so intimidating when someone gets to know you. I wonder about the people you’re dating in college. ‘Cause it’s like, you’ve got that sweet face, that easy smile, that way of saying something funny and self-deprecating. It fools people, because the Clarke under all of that facile shit is whip-smart and devastatingly self-assured. That scared the hell out of me. How did you keep that up? 

What I sometimes hated about you, was the faith you had in me. Even as you were correcting my homework with your green pen (red is so aggressive, you said. It’s so angry.) you were saying, “you’re smarter than this, Bellamy.” 

Why’d you always have to say that? I never felt smarter than anything. I felt like the guy whose homework had green writing all over it and I always had to start over. Start from scratch.

Kind of like now, I guess.

I wish you’d mark up my essays with your green pen now, Princess. I miss that. I miss you. 

12/25/16

Clarke,

Wish I was fifteen again. Remember when I was learning to drive in Betsy? I can’t remember now why you learned to drive first--I think your dad was pretty anxious to not have to drive you to school every day. (Because you refused to ride the bus. Such a Princess.)

Anyway my dad had that blue truck and you named her Betsy, and you already knew how to drive so you’d sit in the middle seat (I called it the bitch seat once--that’s what my dad called it, how was I supposed to know?! And the look you gave me, and the speech about the word bitch? I’ve never, in my life, called anyone a bitch since then.) (Well, except for you. But you know I’m sorry about that, Clarke. I’m sorry. I’msorrysorrysorry. I don’t know how to say sorry enough for the things I’d say when I was drunk.) 

You’d sit in the middle seat with one leg curled under you and you’d recite what I was supposed to do like we were in a play. That damn truck was manual and I was so sick of you reciting when I should shift gears that I could have crashed Betsy just to shut you up. My dad thought you were funny, though. He sat in the passenger seat with a beer and we drove around the park at twenty five miles an hour what feels like a thousand times in my memory. 

But I passed my test in Betsy on the first try, the day I turned sixteen. You still had three more months before your birthday and you were so jealous but I drove you all over town in Betsy that day, music cranked up, windows down. 

When I got home my dad smacked me for not asking permission but you were worth it, Princess, you were always worth the pain. 

I was so angry when he left but when was he ever kind to me? When did he ever show me love? 

Here’s a secret I’ve never told anyone, Princess, not even you: sometimes I think he wasn’t really my father. 

How could a father leave his son the way he left me? 

I should know the answer to this question, ‘cause I left my family and I left you. 

God, I hate holidays. 

1/24/17

Princess,

I might have taken too many classes. I’m trying to hurry, trying to graduate early. I don’t know why, I think I have a fantasy that when I’m finished and I have a teaching job I can make this grand homecoming and you’ll all be so happy to see me and see that I’m different.

I still drink too much but it’s mostly okay.

I know you’ll never see the shiny new me if I still drink, but I have years before I have to care about that.

I took this weird theater class for a fine arts credit and I have to write an essay about why I’m not the main character of my own life. I have no idea what that means, and I think my professor, who can’t be more than 26, is spending too much time on tumblr. 

I’m gonna write about how you’re the main character of my life, but I’m not sure how to explain it without all the drinking and the stairs and your arm…

I hope you’re okay. You’re nearly done with school. What’d you major in, after all? I wonder sometimes if one day I’ll be somewhere and there’ll be an amazing painting and it’ll be yours.

But then, maybe you don’t paint anymore. 

It’s been too long since I saw you, Princess. I feel like I can’t possibly know you anymore. But then I think about you at twelve, all long eyelashes and learning to flirt, and I feel like there’s no universe in which I don’t know you, all of you, the way you cried when your parents said they were getting divorced ~~and how you laid under me the night we~~ \--

I miss your lips, I miss your shoulders, pressing a kiss to them when you were working on your AP Calc homework, distracting you by playing with your hair and trying to convince you it was time to put your pencil down. 

Sometimes you’d turn a smile to me and kiss me and say “later, Bellamy, I’m busy.” 

Other times you’d just go home. 

Feels like you were going home a lot, at the end. I thought I was your home, Princess? When did that change? Which time did I go just that step too far? 

God, in the end, which time did I not? 

3/16/17

princess today i’m 22. how did i get this old? and how’d i survive this long without you? it’s four years and that seems way too long, clarke, way too long since i’ve seen your face, smelled your perfume. do you still wear chanel chance and act kinda snobby about it when you tell people? i guess you can be snobby if you wanna princess cause it always smelled so good you always smelled so good and i just want to put my arms around you again bury my face in your neck and try to inhale you i want it to be before i drank too much when we were just dumb kids with a couple of beers at a bonfire and we’d sit in the back of betsy and i dared you to kiss raven once and you said, don’t objectify me bellamy blake but then you kissed her anyway. i think you kinda liked it princess have you come out as bi yet? maybe you’ll never figure it out if i don’t come home and tell you and princess, i swear i’m gonna come home but i’ve gotta stop drinking first and it’s my birthday so i’m not gonna stop tonight.  
i kinda think i can’t possibly still love you after all this time but when people ask if i have a girlfriend somehow i always think of you for a second. we were just stupid kids in a too-small town but is it possible to have a soulmate clarke cause i think you might be mine?   
i want us to have never been seventeen, princess, cause that’s where it all went wrong. 

5/19/17

It’s your birthday, Princess, and you’re graduating. Jasper made such an excited post on Insta, lucky him that MIT walked last week. He’s going to get to see you and Raven walk across that stage, and I’m so fucking jealous of him. Hopefully he’ll post pictures. You look so mature, Princess, even with that half-drunk smile on your face. You were always poised, now you’re something else altogether, and I love you and hate you for it, for growing up without me, for leaving me behind. 

I know I’m the one who left you but you’re the one graduating college and you’re the one who looks like you’re ready to walk into a boardroom and take control. Still so curious about your major. What’ll my Princess deign to do, after all?

I know you’ll be mad--so please don’t be mad--but sometimes I text Jasper and sometimes he texts back. He tells me how you all are--just in snippets, just on the surface. He told me he’s taking his big brain and his MIT degree and going to teach AP Chem at Arkadia High and I just can’t understand it. He said he wants to inspire a love of science in the next generation and okay that’s admirable but I always imagined him inventing AI or something like that. Teaching? Holy shit he’ll teach Octavia if she takes AP Chem.

Jasper says you’re doing well and you still make art, but he didn’t tell me much more. I think it makes him feel like a spy but I also think he feels sorry for me. I’m a bad person for taking advantage of that but I’m so desperate to know who you are now, Princess. I know you’re all the things you were before but I want to know what you’ve stacked on top. 

Jasper says you’re tough now, and that confused me, ‘cause you were always tough, Princess. Jasper should know that more than anyone, ‘cause you were tough for him so many times. I hate to think that I made you cold, Princess, I hate to think I made you mean. 

But I was cold and mean to you so many times. Maybe I infected you, biowarfare to go along with the rest of the abuse.

‘Cause I think it was abuse, Princess. I think I’m no better than my dad with his slaps. I used my words to strip you bare and give you emotional black eyes. 

I need therapy and I’m looking for a job where I can afford to buy my own insurance: ADHD meds and therapy could change my life, could make me better, and when I’m better, I can come home and tell you I’m sorry, Princess. 

I’m gonna come home and tell you I’m sorry, Princess, I swear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Devil's in the Details/Bright Eyes
> 
> Oh, Bellamy. You're doing stuff! You're going places! And there's no one to be proud of you.
> 
> It's so interesting to fill in details for him, what he's doing and how he feels about it intermixed with the past and his feelings for Clarke--it's sad but such a joy to write, I don't know how to explain that? 
> 
> Also, Jasper's been talking to Bellamy! Somehow I think Clarke is not going to be pleased when she finds out this little detail. 
> 
> Love your comments more than pineapple, and love talking to you about this story! Your excitement for it is thrilling to me and keeps me working on it until 12:48AM.


	7. Once Something Dies, You Can't Make It Live

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Homecoming Dance!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Man, I wrote these next two chapters in tandem and all in one big outpouring of angst. Hope you like them. Your continued excitement and support for this story is so incredible.

Raven never volunteers for anything, and she’s paying for it the day of the Homecoming Dance: Diyoza corners her in the hallway as Raven’s walking to Clarke’s classroom and says they absolutely need another chaperone and only Ms. Reyes will do. 

Ms. Reyes can’t figure out a graceful way to weasel out of it, right there in the hallway with Diyoza grinning at her like a shark, and now she’s in Clarke’s bedroom whining that she absolutely will not under any circumstances wear Clarke’s pink poodle skirt. 

Clarke, who’s trying to tame her curls into a shiny, perfect ponytail with a bow, doesn’t have time for Raven’s complaints. “Rolled up jeans, then, and a white button down, and there’s a varsity sweater with a big A on it in the back of my closet. Oh, and folded down white socks with Keds. You wear a size 7, right? I have a pair of red Keds in that hanging organizer on the back of the door.” 

Clarke’s got on a sky blue poodle skirt. Her white button down has a perfect, Peter Pan collar and she has a black cardigan thrown over her shoulders. White socks with lace edges and black and white tap shoes complete her look and Raven sweeps her eyes over Clarke with an annoyed sigh. “I don’t know how any of us are supposed to keep up with you,” Raven says. “You go all out for all the dances and pep rallies.”

Clarke shrugs. “It gives the kids a little thrill to see a teacher all dressed up. And you look really cute, Raven. Here, put your hair in a ponytail, I have a ribbon in the right color, I think…”

When they arrive at the dance, Raven positions herself at the door to take tickets and Clarke wanders in to watch the students. Madi and Charlie are shrill in their excitement over Clarke’s outfit, both girls dressed in Pink Lady jackets, though Charlie is wearing hers with pegged black pants and Madi’s found a wiggle skirt somewhere. They tell her Octavia is a Pink Lady, too, and Clarke fleetingly questions where, exactly, Octavia is, but instead of hunting her down as she definitely should--Clarke poses for a picture with Madi and Charlie, wondering what social media app it’ll end up on, and when she turns away from them she comes face-to-face with Bellamy.

He’s perfectly costumed in a letter jacket, rolled-up jeans, and Converse, and she could murder him for daring to be at this dance, she really could. “Mr. Blake,” she she says coolly, shouldering past him, and he replies, very quietly, 

“Looking good, Princess.”

The glare she shoots him leaves Madi open-mouthed. 

Clarke doesn’t get the escape she needs; Principal Diyoza is right there, and she says, “Clarke!” so warmly that Clarke gets a rush reminiscent of high school and feeling like the favorite student. “You look fabulous.” Diyoza eyes Bellamy. “And Mr. Blake, you look excellent yourself. Listen, no one is dancing. Could you please take your beautifully costumed selves out to the dance floor and get things started?” 

Clarke closes her eyes briefly. She’s never refused to do anything Diyoza’s asked, not once, the entire time she’s been teaching at Arkadia, but this she’s not sure she can do…

Except Bellamy’s already grabbed her hand, he’s already leading her to the dead center of the dance floor. The DJ is just switching to a slow song and Bellamy pulls her hips towards him and puts one hand on her waist, lacing his fingers through her other hand. 

Clarke is trying for slow breathing, the way her first therapist taught her, freshman year of college. She might make it through the dance if she doesn’t look at him, at his eyes, so intent, and his mouth. God, all the times she kissed that mouth, even in this very gym, so full of memories for them--she must have danced with him a hundred times, a thousand times, right here, just like this. 

“So, why are you Clarke, and I’m Mr. Blake?” he asks, and there’s a question she can answer, there’s safe ground. 

“She grew up with my dad,” Clarke tells him. “She was literally there when I was born.” Clarke keeps her tone sour, aggressive. Can’t let him think she wants to talk to him, can’t let him think conversations are a gift she’ll keep on giving. 

Why does he have to be so warm, smell so good, and feel so familiar? She hates him.

She _doesn’t_ hate him and she’s so angry about that.

“I don’t remember her, from when we were kids,” Bellamy hazards, leaning close to Clarke’s ear to be heard over a Taylor Swift love song, “was she around?” 

“No. She was teaching in Ton DC when we were kids. She only came back a few years ago.” 

Clarke can give information about their principal, that is bland, that is blank. It means nothing and Clarke wants their conversations to mean nothing.

“Arkadia is like a magnet, pulling people back,” Bellamy says, and his voice has too much emotion in it, Clarke risks a glance. His eyes are on her face, too, and she looks away quickly. Madi and Charlie have pulled JJ Greenwald onto the dance floor, and they’re laughing as they hold onto each other for the slow song, but Madi keeps casting worried looks in Clarke and Bellamy’s direction.

Clarke doesn’t know how to make the teenager stop obsessing over her teacher's emotional state. 

God, will this song ever end? 

And where the hell is Octavia? 

Clarke sighs deeply: “Have you seen your sister tonight?”

The hand on her waist tightens, the fingers flex: “No. She came with her friends. Why, have you?” 

“No, and the friends she came with are over there, with JJ. They were all supposed to be Pink Ladies. But…” Clarke’s loath to tell Bellamy about Jason Levitt. Breaking Madi’s--and Octavia’s--trust just isn’t in her, especially when Bellamy’s no better than a stranger. 

Mercifully, the song ends. 

“Watch the kids. I’ll go find her.” 

“I’ll come.”

“You absolutely will _not_ ,” Clarke flashes. “You haven’t earned that. I’m the one who keeps Octavia safe, so I’m the one who’ll go find her and drag her back here." 

When she turns to leave, Bellamy pulls her back: “I want to be the one who keeps her safe, Clarke, don’t you get it? One of the reasons I came back is exactly that--to be the big brother.”

Clarke snatches her wrist away from him. “That kind of shit doesn’t happen overnight, Bellamy, and you’ve been home for, what, two weeks? You’re only going to make her angry and alienate her further if you come with me. Stay here, I’m warning you”

And now, for the first time, Bellamy’s anger is rising: “You’re _warning_ me? Who the hell do you think you are, Clarke?”

“I’m the one who stayed,” she snaps, “I’m the one who stayed, and you’re the one who left. You think you can convince Octavia to trust you? I wish you the best of luck with that, Bellamy, but you won’t be able to do it tonight, so stay here while I find your sister.”

It’s hard to feel like she’s won, when she’s stomping away from him with ponytail swinging and the fluff of her skirt floating around her, but she’s fought with Bellamy while wearing stupider things, she’s fought with Bellamy wearing nothing, so she continues with her chin in the air. 

Finding Octavia isn’t hard, after all, the makeout spots are the same as they were when Clarke and Bellamy hid in them all those years ago, and Clarke calls out, “Octavia _Blake_ ,” sharply and the pair jumps apart. 

The older boy is handsome and wears a sheepish smile along with his Buddy Holly outfit. He throws Octavia a shocked look when she whines, “Cla-arke,” and Clarke’s having none of it: “Who’s your friend, Ms. Blake?” 

“Jason Levitt, senior,” he offers, and Clarke has to give him credit; he walks towards her and sticks out his hand. She shakes it. To do otherwise would simply be rude, and for all of Clarke’s faults she wasn’t raised to be rude.

“Ms. Griffin, Art and Art History,” she replies, “Mr. Levitt, as a senior, are you aware of the school’s policy regarding being in the halls during dances?”

He ducks his head, then comes back up with a charming smile, “yes, Ms. Griffin, I am, and I’m sorry.”

“Mr. Levitt, are you also aware that Ms. Blake’s older brother both teaches at this school, and is chaperoning this dance?”

Jason pales, Clarke nods with a tight smile. 

“I suggest that the two of you come with me, if you’d like to avoid detention, and you’d like to enjoy the rest of the dance.” 

“Yes, Ms. Griffin, of course. And we’re--”

“So sorry,” Clarke finishes. “I’m sure you are.”

As Octavia tries to pass Clarke, Clarke yanks on her arm. “I barely fended off Bellamy coming to look for you himself. I really recommend you’re on your best behavior the next few weeks, Octavia, ‘cause he’s wired tight and ready to fight to show you he’s a proper older brother.”

Octavia gives Clarke narrowed eyes. “I dare him to try,” she scoffs. “I fucking dare him. And I know, Clarke. Language.”

Clarke follows Jason and Octavia back into the loud, hot gym, and watches Octavia walk right past Bellamy like she’s never met the man in her life and truly, Clarke can’t blame her. 

Clarke keeps trying to do the same, but somehow tonight she ends up standing right next to him, and assuring him, “no harm, no foul, I found her right away, and she’s fine.”

“She was tucked up in that empty spot under D-hall’s stairs, kissing that kid, wasn’t she?”

Clarke bites the inside of her cheek, tries not to smile, tries not to give Octavia away. Clarke and Bellamy used to hide under D-hall’s stairs, too, once, twice, a dozen times, she flushes as she remembers the way he used to kiss up her throat, and she’s grateful the gym is dark.

“You forget, Princess, that I know how you look when you’re trying not to smile,” he chides, and there’s a trace of amusement in his voice that Clarke wants to crush.

Jason and Octavia are swaying together across the room, and the boy places a chaste but meaningful kiss on the inside of her neck. Bellamy’s fists clench and he takes a step forward. Clarke puts out her arm. “They’re not doing anything wrong, Bellamy. And they’re teenagers, this is what teenagers do.”

“Do you ever think that maybe I don’t want my sister to do the same things I did when I was a teenager?” 

“The year we were sixteen, we had so much fun, Bellamy. It would be so hypocritical for you to say Octavia shouldn’t do the exact same things--including hiding under the stairs and making out with her boyfriend.” 

“But the year we were seventeen, that’s the year it all went wrong--and that kid is seventeen, isn’t he?” 

Bellamy’s fists are still clenched and he’s positioned to take off across the room, and Clarke can’t think of anything to do other than wrapping her hand around his, just like Raven has done for Murphy so many times. 

“Jason Levitt isn’t Bellamy Blake,” she reminds Bellamy. “It isn’t fair to put our mistakes off on Octavia and whoever she decides to date.” 

_Our mistakes_ , that’s kinder than she meant to be. But it’s a lie to think that what happened is all on Bellamy. It’s a lie to act as if she doesn’t have her own part in that last year. 

Clarke never hurt Bellamy the way he hurt her, oh no, she wasn’t a name caller, not the kind of person who could be responsible for someone getting pushed down the stairs.

But she knows from years of sitting on a therapy couch that she cut Bellamy with her words, that she pressured him and demanded he be too similar to her. And that wasn’t fair, she understands that as an adult. 

The thing for Clarke is, the thing for her will always be, not that she ended up at the bottom of the stairs but that Bellamy left her there. 

And with that memory she abruptly lets go of his hand and walks away to make sure Madi and Charlie aren’t drinking out of a flask like they were at the last dance. 

They are, of course they are, so she confiscates it to throw in her bottom right desk drawer. They can have it at 3:45 on the last day of school. 

It’s October 17. If Bellamy rides out the rest of the school year, Clarke has so many more days of trying to ignore his good intentions, and she’s starting to wonder if she can do it without losing an important piece of herself. 

It’s fucking exhausting. 

Jasper and Monty are sprawled across the couch together when Clarke finally gets home, her ponytail limp and Madi’s flask tucked in her purse. Monty opens his eyes to whisper, “hey, you look fantastic. How was the dance?” He always asks this when Clarke chaperones, as if she herself went to boogie on the gym floor, not supervise a couple hundred horny teenagers. 

He’s a good roommate, Monty is, and even though Clarke knows he moved to Arkadia for a lot of reasons that have nothing to do with her, she loves that their friendship survived college and led to them living together now. She knows his job pays well and he could afford his own place, and she knows perfectly well that he could move in with Jasper, instead, Monty insists, every year when they renew their lease, that he needs a space independent of his boyfriend. 

Even though said boyfriend ends up at their place half the week. 

Clarke tells him things were fine, and pats both of their heads on the way to her room. 

She takes off her costume and wishes she could take off the night as easily, wishes she could shed the feeling of familiarity when she danced with Bellamy, wishes, oh God, wishes she could ignore the emotion that rose in her chest when she took his hand. 

Clarke buries her head in her pillow, groans aloud in the safety of its foam. 

Her phone is buzzing, and she considers ignoring it, but as always, she wonders if Murphy’s in the drunk tank, and peels open an eye to see who’s calling; it’s the man himself, but she supposes if he has his phone he’s probably not in jail. 

She answers just in case: “ ‘lo?”

“Raven just told me--no, shut up,” Murphy says exasperatedly to Raven’s background voice, “Just told me that you and Bellamy were dancing and holding hands tonight. You’re not--Clarke, please tell me you’re not--forgiving him and starting up this shit again.” 

Clarke sighs, “I’m not, Murphy, of course I’m not. Diyoza made us dance. And the holding hands was me making sure that he didn’t slug a seventeen year old boy for kissing Octavia.”

“What right does he have to care who kisses Octavia? It’s us who’ve been watching out for her, not his absentee ass. Hang on, Raven wants to say something, gonna put this on speaker.”

Raven’s voice, clear as a bell: “It’s so annoying to watch him try to slide into his life like he’s been here all this time. When did he get his shit together enough to get a degree, anyway? We all went to good schools, we’re all serious academics. And he’s, what, an alcoholic who went to class drunk? What’s Diyoza thinking with him?” 

Murphy: “You’re just mad because you teach shop with your engineering degree,” and Clarke’s not sure what happens, but there’s muffled shouting from their end of the line. 

“Guys,” she protests, “guys, he’s in AA. He’s been sober for awhile.” 

Sudden silence, then Raven, quietly enraged, threatening: “Are you defending Bellamy Blake?”

“I’m just--I’m as mad as you are, but it’s shitty to think Diyoza hired someone underqualified when she also hired me, you, and Jasper.”

Sure. Sure it’s Diyoza’s virtue she’s trying to protect.

Not Bellamy’s. She’d never protect Bellamy’s. Right?

“You remember the reason he left town, right?” Murphy’s got a cloud on his words, a thunder, a storm. “You--Clarke you remember? You can look at your arm and remember? And when you woke up after the first surgery, and I was sitting there? And you looked for him and we all knew he’d blown town? Jasper thought he’d come back but then he didn’t, Clarke, not until a couple of weeks ago. So like...gird your loins, Griffin. This guy didn’t just break your bones, he broke your heart. He doesn’t deserve to be defended and he doesn’t deserve to be forgiven.”

“I know that, Murphy.”

Raven: “But do you? Because...I know the way he is, so charming. It could be tempting, Clarke. But he’ll only hurt you again. We all know that.”

Clarke, sitting cross legged in her bed, trying to blink back tears, nods even though they can’t see. “I do know that. And I’ve told him--I’ve told him in the cruelest way. But he keeps trying and I--”

Murphy: “Should we come over? Do you want us there?” 

“It’s okay. Monty and Jasper are here. I’m fine, it was just a long day, and I swear, Octavia’s gonna be the death of me one of these days…” 

“Yeah, but it’ll be you,” Raven grumbles, “not her fucking brother, who wouldn’t have even known who she was with or where she was…”

“Well, if he knew she was with a boy, he’d’ve known exactly where she was…”

Murphy: “Under the stairs in D-hall, huh?”

“Yup.”

“When’re you gonna invite me to a dance, Reyes?” he asks, bold as brass, especially for a couple who hasn’t admitted they are a couple--and Clarke shoves her face into the pillow again. 

“Under the stairs in D-hall isn’t worth all those sweaty, stinky, teenagers,” Raven replies, with admirable grace. 

“I think I’ll be the judge of that,” and his voice is so low, so sensual. Clarke knows what it’s like to be on the other side of that voice, part of a long, complex history between her and Murphy. 

It wasn’t a mistake, not exactly, and she doesn’t regret it, never could. But she doesn’t want to hear him sound like that when it’s directed at someone else, and she quickly dismisses them, sends them on their way to do the things that voice implies.

Jasper knocks on the door quietly, pokes his head in without waiting for a reply. She wrinkles her nose at him: “I could’ve been naked, you know.”

“You change in the bathroom, that’s where the hamper is.” 

It’s so annoying to have lifelong friends, they always know everything about you.

“Did you hear the entire phone call, or only part of it?” 

“Oh, whole thing,” he says, sitting on the edge of her bed and patting her knee. “Do you think Diyoza’s trying to do some matchmaking, not realizing the past you guys have? This is the second time she’s demanded you do shit with Bellamy, and I actually know for a fact that she cornered him just like she did Raven and asked him to chaperone.” 

Clarke tilts her head: “And how do you know that?” 

Jasper’s cheeks flame, and he takes a deep breath: “Well, um, he told me.”

Clarke knows she doesn’t have a leg to stand on, but she rallies and accuses: “So you’re having casual conversations with Bellamy, these days?”

“Clarke, c’mon. I know you’re angry, but it’s been a long damn time. If you don’t want to forgive him, that’s up to you, and I 100% support you, but you can’t demand that I feel the same way. He’s a different person now, and I want to give him another chance.” Jasper puts his hand on her shoulder, brushes her hair away so he can get a better look at her face. “Actually, I only like, 50% support you in not forgiving him. Since he showed up on Tuesday, I can see how much your anger and heartbreak is eating you up inside. If you forgive him--maybe if you read his letters, Clarke, maybe you’ll be able to let go of some of that shit. I’d love to see your shoulders lighter, honestly. I say this as your BFF, I really do.” 

Clarke rolls her eyes at him. “My BFF, huh? How do you know? Maybe it’s Raven.”

“Oh, please. I gave you a Now & Later from my lunch on the first day of kindergarten and no one can surpass my sugary bribe.” 

“You ate twenty pounds worth of my Red Vines later on, I think I’ve more than paid you back.” 

Jasper runs his thumb across her cheekbone. “Will you promise to consider what I’m saying?”

She nods, and thinks of the envelope in her desk. 

It can’t hurt to read at least the first letter, can it?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Take It Easy (Love Nothing)/Bright Eyes
> 
> Eeeeeeee, slow dancing, hand holding, Murven getting sexy, Jasper standing up for Bellamy, and Clarke considering reading the letters?!
> 
> Also, delinquents 2.0 making out under the stairs and drinking from flasks? Cracks me up how Clarke is totally onto all of their antics--because she did the exact same stuff. 
> 
> Bellamy's letters will be up, like, super shortly, I'm nearly done with the chapter.


	8. You Said It Feels Good/I Said I'll Give It A Try

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Living in your letters, Bellamy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hurt my own feelings with these letters this week--again. Also an extra warning: we talk about abuse a little bit in this chapter, again.

6/27/17

Princess,

Some days I think about Baton Rouge and wish I was back there. I don’t miss the humidity, because holy shit, I’ll take Austin’s long, dry summers over that any time. 

(Why does Summer start in March, here? And why does it end in November? I don’t think you’d like it--your skin would burn, and you always did hate to sweat.)

But I miss Miller a little, he had such a nice family. You know I want to quit drinking, though, and the longer I lived with him the more I realized he had such a Peter Pan complex. He wanted to be young forever and part of that was drinking. And sometimes he wanted to do other shit, and every time I try other shit, Princess, I regret it. Whoever it is always says, “this is the good shit, Blake, just try it,” and I always think that I would die for some good shit.

It’s never good shit. I’m starting to realize there is no good shit, other than me getting through school, quitting drinking, and going home. 

Because more than Baton Rouge, I miss Arkadia. I miss the seasons, ‘cause there are no seasons here other than summer and winter, it’s hot or it’s kinda cold, those are the choices. (now we must live them, or just lay here/do you want that?) (Been listening to so much Bright Eyes lately, and I’m kinda mad at you for getting me into such depressing music, Clarke.)

But yeah, I miss having Spring and Fall, those fresh days where it smelled sweet, even though there’s something to be said about the late summer days here, when the leaves start to smell a little burned, and things are dying because it’s been too hot for too long and there’s a feeling in the air like everything might go up in flames and you’d like it, yeah, you’d dance around the fire. It’s entirely new for me. My friends who are from here roll their eyes and tell me I’ll get sick of it. I don’t tell them but I don’t plan to live here long enough to get sick of it, so I let it be special, let it be interesting. 

One thing you taught me, Princess, is to let things be precious. I don’t think my parents have any understanding of a concept like that, certainly not my dad, and my mom worked so hard all the time, out of the house and in, that she didn’t have time to pause and breathe and be fascinated by things. But you, even when we were little, would grab a cool rock and say, “oh my god, Bellamy, look, it’s shaped just like Arkadia Lake!” and we’d kneel there, in awe of how cool that was. You taught me to kneel and be in awe.

Sometimes I was in awe of you, Princess, and I miss that.

These letters are getting longer, but when I’m not drunk I have so much more to say to you. 

8/15/17

Hey Clarke,

The semester’s about to start and I’m pretty excited. I managed to make that creative writing class work, and we had to submit a nonfiction short story right away. My prof emailed me, said “thrilled you’re joining the class” and highlighting some things he considered as examples of my “pretty turns of phrase.”

I hope you don’t mind but I wrote about you, Princess, about camp the summer after freshman year, when we were supposed to be playing Capture the Flag and someone had the nerve to put us on different teams. I couldn’t stand to be hard on you, I didn’t have the nerve to tackle you when I should have--and you, Princess, pushed me down in the Poison Oak, stole the flag, and ran all the way back to your base with it. 

God, you’re vicious sometimes. 

But I must have written it correctly, because Prof said you sounded so special, so beautiful. Effervescent, he said, and he asked what happened to you.

No nerve again, I told him you went to Troit after high school and we weren’t in touch anymore and he sent back three words: “what a pity.”

What a pity, Princess, the story of you and me. 

(Don’t think I’ve forgotten how you sat with me in the Nurse’s office, and dabbed calamine lotion on my Poison Oak rash. You were mean sometimes, but the consequences always broke your heart. I don’t know how to feel about that.)

11/1/17

Princess,

Went to a Halloween party with Niylah at her friend’s dorm over at UT tonight. Or last night, however you want to put it, it’s 3AM. 

It’s still so hot, coming up with a costume was a beast. Eventually I thought I’d go with my old standby, the Roman soldier, and when I looked at myself in the mirror I remembered our costumes senior year, me the soldier, you dressed up as Diana with the bow and arrow over your shoulder. 

I should have told you how gorgeous you were. I mean I think I probably did, but in passing, the way I started saying everything to you. “You look pretty,” with a kiss on the cheek, like that was all your starving heart needed. 

Other drunk guys look at their girlfriends and start worshipping them, all, “baby you’re so beautiful, I’m so lucky.” But not me. Why couldn’t I have been more like that? Maybe the cracks in our walls wouldn’t have made them fall if I’d been that other guy, you know? 

I went through the pictures on my phone and found some from that Halloween. In the pictures of the two of us you look fake, uncomfortable. But I have some of you and Raven, too, and you’re lovely in those, you look happy, you look--

Well, you look like a goddess. That was the point, I guess.

I haven’t had a drink in awhile but tonight, looking at those pictures, I needed one. 

So much went so wrong that year. Breaks my heart, Princess, every time. I always think it started when my dad left during 11th grade, like I always pin it on that, on Mom’s cut lip and me running out the front door with Octavia in my arms and my nose bleeding and you were in your little Jetta and you said, “there’s no time for the booster seat, just get in the back with her,” and Dad was coming out of the house and he had rage in his eyes, Princess, I thought he was gonna kill me, I did, and you spun off before I’d even closed the door. 

Your mom cleaned me up in the emergency room and she said we should press charges and she called your dad to go to the house and get my mom out of there.

It was too late. Dad was gone for good and he’d left my mom in bad shape. She healed, though, I healed, and we’d saved Octavia, me and you. 

See that’s why I always forgive you, Princess, when I get drunk and I think about you being mean or pressuring me or not understanding shit, like when me and Murphy never had money and for years there was this line around your lips whenever you wanted to go to the movies or whatever and we couldn’t afford it--and you were young and spoiled and I get that but me and you, Princess, sometimes I think there was as much we didn’t understand about each other as there was that we did.

I think I’m tripping over my words ‘cause I had this ridiculous punch at the party and now I’ve pulled out the whiskey. I’m trying to say that you helped me save my sister, my little six year old sister who couldn’t understand that when Dad yelled she should hide. 

There was no hiding that day, though, and we had to run, and you were right there for us and we ran to you.

I’ll forgive you for anything, Clarke, for everything, ‘cause I could always run to you. 

11/16/17

Hey Clarke,

It’s nearly Thanksgiving and I can’t get over how hot it still is. Niylah grew up here, she says some years she could wear a bikini to Thanksgiving Dinner and some years she needs a parka. That’s sort of fun, sort of exciting. God knows we always needed a coat in Arkadia, always so cold already at this time of year. 

Yesterday I was stalking Jasper on Insta and I saw you in your classroom at AHS. I think my mouth fell open, Clarke, I’ve never been so gobsmacked. You decided to teach? My boardroom-boss-babe Princess is sitting on the edge of a teacher’s desk with a paintbrush in her mouth and a landscape portrait for her students to follow along with? 

This is what I mean when I say I’m so desperate to know you now. Because it’s like: there is so much I know about you that will always be true. But there’s a new Clarke, there’s a more Clarke, there’s a next-level Clarke, and I don’t have her at my fingertips and I just want her--want you. 

You look great, your hair in a bun, that dress and its red belt and your purple cardigan. When I see you in his posts I always think you look more beautiful than the last time. You’re eighty levels of beautiful deep, at this point, I think. 

It’s bitterly funny. I decided I wanted to teach history long before I knew any of you had decided to go into education, but unfairly, you’re already there, doing what I want to so badly. 

I’m trying not to be mad about that, because I know the fault is only my own. But sometimes I let myself drown in self-pity Princess. Sometimes I tell myself, just for a few hours. And I go back and look at old pictures and have a drink or twelve and when the hours are over I put everything away and go to sleep.

That’s how I’m managing my drinking these days, with an alarm set on my phone and three aspirin before bed. They remind me of you, too, those aspirin, those headaches you get when you have too many beers and you texted your mom that you were sleeping at Raven’s but you slept at mine instead. 

I feel like your mom had to know. She’s not a stupid woman. But then, she never much cared about what you did as long as you didn’t embarrass her and I guess you sleeping off cheap beer at your boyfriend’s house isn’t too embarrassing.

You’d always bring Octavia in and lock the door before we went to sleep.

You were smart like that, Princess. You knew shit. How’d you always know so much?

12/25/17

Princess, have I mentioned recently how much I hate Christmas? Maybe last year I told you. (Or whatever, the ghost you I’m talking to when I write these letters.)

I’m not drunk yet but I’m on my way. I honestly don’t know how else to handle this stupid fucking day. Niylah invited me to her dad’s, but I went to his place on Thanksgiving and I don’t want to be a burden or Niylah’s poor orphan friend, you know? Even though I’m totally her poor orphan friend--and I turned myself into that person, it’s only through fault of my own. 

Everything is only through fault of my own and that’s a shitty thing to realize.

I was trying to make myself feel better by thinking of happy memories and hey, Princess, remember Winter Formal sophomore year? We made Jasper smuggle the flask in because he’s so innocent looking and he was sweating, like literally sweating when he handed over his ticket. And then you and I snuck out and into D-hall and spent the whole damn night under the stairs, not sure if we danced even once. Raven was so irritated that we abandoned her with Murphy ‘cause Jasper was in a corner batting his eyelashes at Bryan. 

Your dress was so pretty but it was even prettier when I had it half off. You look good in blue, Princess, you should always wear blue. You should get married in blue, fuck white, plus it goes like, something borrowed, something blue, right? So your dress can be blue and that’ll cover it.

Princess, fuck, don’t marry anyone before I can come home. Please. I have so much to prove to you but when I do--when I prove it, Clarke, because I’m going to, dammit, then we can have us again, the good us, the smart us, the grown-up us. 

We’re not seventeen anymore, Clarke, and I know you’re better and I’ll be better too, I swear I will. And our better selves, I believe those selves are meant to be together.

It’s probably fucked up that I’m still set on some girl I knew when I was a kid and I never tell anyone that I’m still set on you--except Niylah and she understands--but I don’t know how to not be set on you, Princess. 

I keep trying to be set on someone else--I met this sweet girl, Echo, she has these crazy cheekbones and she’s smart and beautiful, crazy beautiful, and she’s like, a world-class archer, Olympic-level? And all of those things are so cool and a sane man would die for her, right? Right, Clarke? 

I figured out a long time ago I’m not sane, though. Not when it comes to you. 

Fuck Christmas. 

1/7/18

Hey Princess,

You always said you didn’t believe in New Year’s Resolutions. You were like, “Influential people don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, Bellamy,” so I just stopped telling you mine. 

Sometimes you were such a snot, I swear. 

I didn’t make one for 2013 though, and we see how that year turned out, and all the years after it. But this is the fifth year, Clarke, and I thought maybe this year I could try again. 

So I went to an AA meeting tonight. 

You know how I feel about religion, and I kept telling myself I didn’t want any part of that, but I mentioned it to Echo--you know, Echo? The archer? Anyway, she said there are AA meetings that aren’t affiliated with religious bullshit so she helped me do some research and I found one. 

I didn’t do anything dramatic, like throw out all the alcohol in the house, even though Niylah said we could, if I wanted to. It seemed like too much, and you know I’m not that kind of guy, who makes those big gestures. I just went to the meeting, and I just stayed for the whole thing. 

There was coffee and there were donuts and I didn’t really want donuts but today’s the coldest it’s been so far--and Austin has lulled me into a false complacency, I forgot that it would, eventually, get cold. So I was adding sugar to my coffee and this guy, this crazy-tall, tattooed, mean-looking guy, very softly asked me how I was. 

Hey Clarke, I don’t want you to feel sorry for me, but I kinda burst into tears. And the guy put his arm around my shoulders and steered me into another room and pushed Kleenex towards me and said, “wanna tell me about it?” 

And I realized, after all this time, I’ve never told anyone about it. I bet you had a lot of expensive therapy, Clarke. I bet you can talk about it without even getting choked up, ‘cause I know you and I know the way you deal with things. I bet you get mad instead of sad, I bet you call me your asshole abusive ex, and I know I deserve that, even though it’s reductive. 

But I’m not like that and I can’t do that. I’m not mad I’m just sad, I’ve just been more devastated with every passing year, and more ashamed, and more more more of things that chip away at my soul. 

His name is Lincoln and I told him fucking everything, Clarke.

There’s another meeting Wednesday and I’ll be there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Lover I Don't Have to Love/Bright Eyes
> 
> Chapter title has a dual meaning this week, as does the name of the song! 
> 
> I love writing about Austin from Bellamy's POV! This is a college town with a huge amount of transplants and Bellamy ending up here is so believable to me.
> 
> Guys, I literally write Bellamy, like I'm the author and I thought this shit up, and I somehow ended up so PROUD of him this chapter. I just adore him. 
> 
> I love writing the way Bellamy saw Clarke: the good stuff and the bad stuff is all together in a swirl of, it doesn't matter that you have these characteristics, I love you in spite of them and because of them.


	9. Our Love is Dead (but without limit)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we explore the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It broke my heart a little bit to write about how Clarke views her past self.

Clarke makes the decision in the middle of the night, sometime, and then she can’t sleep. 

She’ll read the first letter, and then she’ll decide. What she’ll decide, she’s not sure exactly. Decide to read a few more? Decide to read the rest? Decide to dump the whole damn notebook in the trash and tell Bellamy Blake that if he ever speaks to her again she’ll cut off his---

_Okay, getting carried away there_ , she tells herself sternly. _Getting way, way too carried away_. 

She gives up trying to sleep around 3AM, opens her laptop, puts on her headphones, and binges half a season of some British Netflix show about a haunted house. At 7AM she gets dressed quietly in running clothes and sleek sneakers, brushes her teeth and pulls her hair into a messy, no, disastrous bun. She leaves her purse and swipes her keychain as well as the huge ring with all the important keys for AHS, and her phone. 

If caught by Jasper and Monty, she’s going running. 

If caught by anyone at the school, she was grabbing something from her desk before going running. 

Clarke’s pretty sure she shouldn’t be using her school keys to get into the building on a Sunday to read letters from her high school boyfriend AKA the love of her life up to this point AKA the guy who pushed her down the stairs and broke her heart into one gazillion pieces but hey, Principal Diyoza is Aunt Charmaine around her house. She’ll get away with it, caught or not. 

_You’re so fucked up over your ex_ , Lexa used to say. In fact, it was just about the last thing Lexa ever said to her. This is only proving it. Clarke is so fucked up over Bellamy. So fucked up that half of her wants these letters to be beautifully written apologies that’ll sway her towards forgiving him, and half of her wants them to be screeds blaming her for everything that happened up to and including him leaving town. 

Clarke wants to throw the notebook in the trash and spend the rest of the year studiously avoiding Bellamy’s brown eyes and the hands that feel exactly like the hands she used to hold when they were fifteen. And she wants to be mad about it, when she does it, so that she doesn’t have to ask herself if it was the right thing. 

Bellamy called her, once. At least, she’s always been pretty sure it was him. It was over a year after the accident, just a few days before she returned to Arkadia for the summer between freshman and sophomore year. The number came up as Louisiana and something churned up inside of her, a distant wish that he would call from a strange number one day and she’d answer and it would be him and he’d have a hundred good answers to go with the hundred questions she intended to ask. So she answered it, she said hello, and there was a noise--just a soft, tiny, hurt noise--before the caller hung up. 

Clarke heard that soft, tiny, hurt noise again a few days ago, when Bellamy was in the hall to find out that Octavia wished him gone. So many years between the first time and the second, but it chipped away at Clarke’s armor. 

There are several cars in the parking lot, which is pretty surprising for 8AM on a Sunday, and Clarke’s glad she thought of an excuse before she showed up. There must be a meeting for one department or another, and she’s glad it’s not the Fine Arts department. A bunch of artists, actors, and musicians would have a)picked a restaurant meeting, where they could have wine and b)never, ever chosen to be at the school at 8AM on the weekend. Plus, Clarke and Maya are the heads of the FAD, and they hold as few meetings as possible. 

Ugh, though: casting and rehearsals for the spring musical will be here before she knows it, and Maya will be sitting on the edge of Clarke’s desk begging for help with the props and set design. She’ll have Raven building and Clarke painting for months. 

Last year Clarke nearly convinced Madi to audition. Clarke just knows that sassy little ham is built for the stage. This year’s gonna be the year--Clarke’s sure of it. She should start putting in the work now, and that’s what she’s thinking about, paused outside of her classroom, when she hears Bellamy’s voice rumbling from the conference room down the hall. 

Shit. 

All the classrooms have blinds on them now--the better to hide from Active Shooters, my dear--and she slips into her room with shaking hands, yanks the blinds down, and curses the stupid, ridiculous, pompous History Department and its Sunday morning meeting. 

The door locks with a deadbolt better than any Clarke’s ever had on her apartment doors, but she thinks it might look weird if she locks it. After all, Mrs. Byrne from AP History II (US 1939-Present) has a soft spot for Clarke, and if she sees the light on in her room she’s definitely going to say hello, and she’ll find it seriously sketchy if Clarke’s locked the door. So Clarke sighs, and drops into her chair behind the desk. She hopes the meeting goes on forever--and it might, because Pike, the department head, can really get to preaching sometimes. 

Clarke just needs a little time with Bellamy’s notebook. A small moment, no interruptions, and she won’t get it at home with Monty and Jasper, so her classroom will have to do. 

Her stomach is in knots when she pulls out the envelope. For the hundredth time in the past week, her fingers skim over Bellamy’s slanted block writing. 

Not Clarke.

No.

Princess, he wrote. 

And it’s interesting, because Clarke’s heard of these sorts of letters before, and seen the envelopes they come in. She’d expect this one to have her name and address, like it could be mailed. 

But Bellamy always intended to deliver this one personally, and it shows. The envelope is a little beat-up, like he was carrying it around in for a while. Clarke wonders if he tried to get up the nerve to give it to her before his first day at the school. 

She probably would have run into traffic to get away from him, so saving it for a time when she couldn’t escape was a solid move. 

He’ll always know her a little too well, this version of Bellamy, this adult Bellamy. She’ll never be able to run from the knowledge that he’s seen every little bit of her, every single expanse of skin. 

They sat next to each other in preschool, and he was the only person she’d ever met with freckles spattering their nose. She called him Bel-mee and he couldn’t quite make the R in Clarke happen. 

“My mommy calls me Bell,” he told her one day, studiously coloring with a blue crayon. “You can call me Bell.” 

She filched his green crayon for her grass, and said, “no, thank you. I like Bel-mee. It’s nice.” 

He looked at her then, brown eyes huge with long lashes just like now, just like the eyes he was staring at her with at the dance, and patiently said, “but, except, I can’t say _Clahke_. So. Does your mommy call you somethin’ else?”

He pronounced it _essept_ , and did so until about the fourth grade, if Clarke’s memory serves. 

“Oh.” She was taken aback, but then offered: “my daddy calls me Princess.” 

Bellamy nodded at her, a bright smile; something he could say, something easier. 

In second grade, Dax (it was always something, with fucking Dax) jeered at Bellamy, said, “Her name’s Clarke, not Princess.”

Bellamy shrugged. “Her name’s Princess to me,” and that was the end of that, for several years. 

In fifth grade, Dax tried calling her Princess himself, and Bellamy squared up for a fight, but Clarke never needed him for protection. She grabbed Dax’s arm and pulled him close, hissing, “don’t ever, ever call me that.”

There’ve been dozens of times over the course of Clarke’s life that someone’s called her _tough_. She wore tough like a layer of armor her entire life. She was tough for herself, she was tough for Jasper. Raven, Murphy, Bellamy, they could generally fend for themselves, though they could always rely on each other and Clarke for backup, but Jasper--he was different. Softer, sweeter, a dreamy soul with messy hair and a crooked smile. 

Clarke punched Dax in the mouth for stealing Jasper’s lunch in seventh grade, and she would have punched him every single day for the rest of her life if it meant she could keep her friend safe from that bully, who spent all his time trying to catch Jasper alone and pick on him.

In tenth grade, during parent-teacher night, a concerned Mrs. Byrne told Clarke’s parents that though Clarke was an exceptional student, Mrs. Byrne had caught the diminutive Clarke threatening Dax Walker in the hall--three separate times. 

Dax was already nearly six feet tall. Clarke’s mom laughed all the way home. 

So yeah, Clarke was tough, and many of her memories are shaded by that, by knowing that though she wore a sweet-faced veneer, she could become someone altogether different in an instant. 

And even though he knew that, even though he watched that happen so many times--and even though sometimes, all that tough was directed at him, Bellamy Blake from preschool fell in love with Clarke. 

And he still loved her when she was too tough, that was the thing about Bellamy. He loved her when she’d shoulder brutally past him because she was mad about something he said in the hall at school. He loved her when she pushed him into Poison Oak at camp so she could win Capture the Flag. He loved her when she defended Jasper with brutal words, when she debated ferociously, spitting poison, until Bellamy threw his hands up and said, “Fine! Fine, Clarke! Jasper, you’re right, and I’m sorry!” 

He loved her when she hurt people’s feelings and refused to apologize. He loved her when she bullied Fox McAffee after Fox said Raven “wasn’t even that pretty” when Finn Collins dumped Fox for Raven. Oh, God, it hurts Clarke’s heart to think about how mean she was to Fox. And when Finn eventually dumped Raven during their last semester? Clarke tore that floppy-haired idiot a new one and no girl went near him for the rest of the year. He couldn’t get a date to senior prom. 

That one was well deserved, Clarke still thinks so, all this time later. She heard he moved to Maine and maybe the story of what a giant, cheating asshole he was wouldn’t follow him there. 

Easy, Princess, Bellamy used to say. You don’t have to be so tough.

Tough became their shorthand; you’re being mean, you’re being cruel, you’re not thinking about people’s feelings. 

Bellamy kept her head on straight so many times. But during senior year, when he was becoming tough himself? That was when things went off-kilter. 

The thing was, Clarke had been tough, sure, she had been, and that’s okay, it’s forgivable. But. She’d been angry in flashes of temper, okay, that’s normal. She’d been carelessly, accidentally cruel, and she’d sometimes used her words to cut. She could cut Bellamy so easily, little slashes all over his skin, but she never wanted to do those things or be that person. She tried, Bellamy knows, he always knew, that she tried to do better. 

When Bellamy started to turn those things back on her, she couldn’t take it, so maybe she wasn’t as tough as she thought. 

He could be nasty in such unexpected ways when he was drunk. Everything would be good until he crossed a threshold, and the worst part was that Clarke could never figure out what that threshold was. Some nights it would be almost as soon as he started drinking, other nights he could be devastatingly drunk before it started. He’d turn on her suddenly, in the middle of a conversation, and say things like, “Yeah, we would’ve had a lot more fun when we went camping, if Clarke wasn’t such a snotty bitch about the air mattresses.” 

Other times they’d be alone and he’d tell her how awful she was, how she acted like his mother when she tried to help him with his homework, what an aggressive, bossy bitch she was when she tried to help him compose an essay for his college application. And why couldn’t she try to look nicer for their dates? All she ever wears anymore are tank tops and cutoffs, and it’s not cute, Clarke. 

It never made sense, and she soon developed a coping mechanism; that horrible drunk wasn’t her Bellamy, the Bellamy she loved, and he was going through a phase. When the phase was over she’d have her old Bellamy back, the one with the big heart, the one who kissed her shoulders when she was trying to do her AP Calc homework, and flashed her that winning smile, and assured her that the homework would still be there when they were done fooling around. 

That Bellamy still came through in fits and starts, and when he would leave again Clarke’s heart would break. 

Break-break-break-broken, that’s what ended up happening, the night Bellamy started in on her and Murphy said, “don’t call her a bitch, man,” and Bellamy snapped, “don’t tell me how to talk to my girlfriend, man,” and Raven grumbled “oh, Christ,” and Clarke said, “c’mon, guys, relax.” 

She doesn’t remember everything that was said, probably because she had a hell of a concussion. It was months before she could turn her head without getting vertigo. But Murphy and Bellamy were on their feet and Bellamy stepped on Raven’s hand and the squeal she gave turned Murphy’s anger up to the next level and he’d said, “I’m sick of your shit, Blake, you keep talking to Clarke like she doesn’t matter! And she matters to me--to us!”

And Bellamy shoved Murphy so hard he ended up stumbling into the small hallway in front of the stairs, and Murphy shoved back, driving his fist into Bellamy’s eye, and Bellamy knocked Murphy on his ass and Clarke darted into the hallway, yelled, “Don’t, Bellamy, don’t,” as he pulled back his fist and his elbow caught her chest and she grabbed for his arm as she swayed towards the stairs and he yanked away from her and down down down she went as the boys stared at her. 

Clarke thinks she remembers Raven screaming. She’s never asked her friend if that part happened, because when they talk about that night it’s always oblique. 

Raven, Clarke, Jasper, Bellamy, and Murphy had been a tightly-knit group since first grade, and they didn’t even blink before covering for Bellamy when the ambulance came and they knew they’d have to make an accounting to adults. They were all going downstairs, jostled each other, and Clarke fell. 

Raven cleaned Murphy’s bloody nose with alcohol before they drove to the hospital. Jasper washed his face free of tears. Bellamy said, “I’ll be right behind you,” and the other three piled into Raven’s car to face Abby and Jake Griffin at the hospital. 

And then Bellamy never showed up. 

Clarke slides her finger under the envelope’s flap, and pulls the notebook out.

A small white card comes with it. Clarke picks it up curiously, and there’s just a paragraph: 

_Princess, I thought I was writing you letters, but it turned into more of a journal. I was terrified of sending these to you, so I never did. When my friend from AA started talking to me about making amends, I thought I had so many things to make amends for that I didn’t know where to start. But in these letters, I admit so many things I never could have said to your face. I thought we could start here, Clarke, me and you. We could start with how I left you, and how I found my way back. There’s nothing I want more than to make things right between us. We can’t change the past, Princess, but maybe we can make a new start._

Clarke wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. The fact that she’s already crying and she hasn’t even opened the damn notebook isn’t a great omen. 

It’s a plain spiral notebook, the kind with the plastic cover so it might survive the whole year and not just a semester. It has three sections, but Bellamy’s ripped out the cardstock dividers. 

She flips the cover, and the first page is scribbled all over with the words _so much for so much more_. 

The second page is dated 4/23/13, and her heart takes a dive into her stomach when she sees Bellamy’s block letters.

She can’t read more than the first letter, short as it is. 

~~Clarke~~ ~~Princess~~ Clarke,

~~_I drove West for three days._ ~~

~~_I still can’t stop thinking of you at the bottom of the stairs._ ~~

~~_You deserve more than this shitty letter but I don’t deserve more than writing it._ ~~ __

_I slept in my car last night. The thing about leaving town in a half-drunk hurry is that you don’t always remember the details. I forgot my Social Security Card and I need it to get hired. I left that $600 I saved stuffed under my mattress. If you need that money for anything, it’s yours. I was saving it for your graduation trip in any case. But I had to ask a librarian how to get a new copy of the card. She was nice but I could tell the state of my face was a concern to her. Murphy landed some good punches. I’ve got a black eye, and a cut on my cheek._

_So I can’t afford a hotel room, and I can’t get a real job. Last night I worked in a taco shop and got paid under the table. One of the kitchen guys said I can work on his dad’s yard crew tomorrow, so I think I’ll be able to survive until the card comes. And sleeping in the car isn’t that bad. Just a hitch in my neck._

_It’s not a broken arm, and I swear, Clarke, I never meant for that to happen. I called Jasper to see how you’re doing, but he just said that if I care so much I should come back.  
He was tough, I’ve never heard him sound like that. I wish I could come back, but what would be the point? You’ll never see me the same way._

_I broke you. I broke us._

_I need a drink._

_I love you, and even though I’m not there I hope you know that._

_Or maybe I hope you don’t. Whatever you need to think to get better, to be okay._

_When I’m trying to fall asleep I’m sure you’ll never be okay, and that’s my fault._

_I don’t think I’m going to send this letter._

_Oh Bellamy_ , she thinks. _You could have come home, even then_. She remembers those first few days, waking up in the hospital. Her mother was the most affectionate she’d ever been, stroking Clarke’s hair away from her face, trying to break the bad news: “you’re going to need several surgeries, honey, and the doctors are worried about nerve damage to your hand. But everyone’s here for you, Clarke. Your friends are here.”

And that was at least partially true, because when Clarke woke up on different occasions, Murphy, or Raven, or Jasper, would be sitting in the chairs near her bed, and they would conjure up smiles and normalcy for her.

She actually tried to decide which friend would tell her the brutal truth, and on the third day when she woke up to Murphy with his feet propped up on the side of her bed, she asked: “Where’s Bellamy?”

It must have been about the same day Bellamy wrote this letter. 

Clarke almost felt bad, when she saw the emotions play across Murphy’s face, anger, hurt, and indecision. Finally he told her the truth. “Clarke, we don’t know where he is. He left the night you fell and I don’t think he’s coming back.”

He came back, though. Bellamy came back. Just eight years too late for Clarke’s wounded heart. He’s here now, with a notebook full of explanations, apologies, and somehow this notebook is managing to hurt her even more than she ever knew possible.

_You could have come back then_ , she thinks furiously, brokenly. _You could have come back, instead of sleeping in your car, and I would have forgiven you._

_Why’d you sleep in your car, Bellamy? You could have gotten that crick in your neck in my hospital room’s chairs._

Clarke knows the rest of the notebook probably has an explanation for why he didn’t come home that night, or the next or the next, but she can’t look at it right now.

Can’t can’t can’t. 

Because she’s realizing after all this time? 

Clarke still loves Bellamy just as much as she did on 4/23/13.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Make War/Bright Eyes
> 
> Oh my GOD these two, their past, the self loathing each of them feels--you really have to wonder about their parents, don't you? 
> 
> I'm sorry if it's a little annoying, but in the next several chapters some of Bellamy's letters will be in Clarke's chapters, or pieces of them. 
> 
> "So much for so much more" is from the song Rapid Hope Loss/Dashboard Confessional and man, can't you see how that particular phrase would resonate with Bellamy, who thinks his life and relationship with Clarke are both over?


	10. Lying While You Confess

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, Bellamy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is so late! I definitely stayed up until like 3AM last night writing Clarke's chapter, so I didn't even wake up until noon today.

1/25/18

Clarke,

Interesting thing about AA, I could go to a meeting every night if I wanted to. I like the crew that meets Mon-Weds-Fri at the Community Center, though. The woman who runs it, Indra, is tough but kind, and I already told you about Lincoln, what’s the phrase? Looks like he could kill you but is a cinnamon roll? Lincoln’s definitely a (very tall, very muscular, very intimidating) cinnamon roll. 

On Fridays it’s a little different. We sit in a circle and we talk on a more personal level. I don’t know if that’s normal, but I like it. People share about how their alcoholism has affected their families or things as simple as how they’re doing that week. There’s usually only about a dozen of us there.

It’s been a couple of weeks now and Lincoln keeps encouraging me to share so tonight I said it: “My name’s Bellamy, and I’m an alcoholic.”

Dunno how much you know about AA meetings at this point in your life, Princess, but everyone kinda mumbles back, “Hi, Bellamy.”

I sat there wringing my hands, because I had more to admit, but that’s another thing about AA meetings, people are really patient. They were in your shoes once, most of them, the ones who have been there for a while. 

Finally, I added: “When I was 18, and drunk, I caused an accident in my home, and my girlfriend at the time was knocked down the stairs. She was severely injured. After that I left my hometown and didn’t speak to my friends or family again. And I’ve been using my feelings about that as an excuse to drink for four and a half years. I don’t want to do that any more.”

I won’t tell you what they said back, because AA is supposed to be highly confidential, and even writing it down feels wrong. But Princess, thing is, after the meeting Lincoln told me how proud he was of me. 

No one’s been proud of me since I left you behind those four and a half years ago, and I forgot how good it feels.

I used to bask in the warmth of your approval, Princess, and I didn’t realize how much I missed that. 

Lately missing you has become an amalgamation, your separate characteristics all mixed up together with one big heartache. I forget the individual things that made you you, the Clarke who haunts my dreams and thoughts, sometimes, and that’s not right, that’s not how I want to think of you. You are a puzzle to be put together carefully, Clarke, but I need to take your pieces apart, if you don’t mind. Otherwise I might forget why I’m doing this. 

I know I’m supposed to be doing it for myself, but that’s ridiculous. I’ve never been able to do a thing in my life for just me. There was you, or Octavia, or our friends or my mom...but me? Not likely. 

3/5/18

Heard this song, Princess, and it reminded me of you. Chorus goes: We’re not who we used to be/we’re just two ghosts standing in the place of you and me/trying to remember how it feels to have a heartbeat. 

‘Cause don’t you think, Clarke, that when we see each other again, that’s how it’ll be? 

It’s crazy, all the times I think about how much we’re not who we used to be but in the same moment, I think we’ll always be those people. I don’t know about you, but I think I’ll be eighteen and standing on that landing for the rest of my life, and the more I try to straighten myself out, the more I can smell the wood polish and those “clean linen” candles my mom always loved and Murphy’s cologne and Raven’s shampoo, and she screams and you’re at the bottom of the stairs, Clarke, your hair spread out under your head, and for a moment, just a moment, just the worst moment of my entire life, before or since, I think you’re dead. 

It’s Tuesday but I’ve gotta go to a meeting tonight because I’ve been thinking about the moment I thought you were dead all day and I don’t wanna drink tonight, God, Princess, I don’t.

3/17/18

Princess,

Niylah told me to invite Lincoln over for dinner last night (tonight? It’s so late, like 2 in the morning, and I can never decide how to describe this time of day) But anyway, ‘cause it was my birthday, obviously, so I invited him over. I kind of thought he would say no, because it’s one thing to be nice to the clearly-fucked-up guy from AA but it’s another thing entirely to hang out with him.

But instead Lincoln clapped a hand on my shoulder (and my skinny ass nearly fell to the floor, like, damn that guy must work out a lot) and said he’d be there, and Happy Birthday in advance. 

I was pretty nervous about doing the birthday thing without alcohol. I’ve gotten blitzed on every birthday since I left. But Niylah kept me busy all day: We went out for brunch, then dallied around the artisan grocery store for two hours getting the ingredients for dinner. Niylah was set on making a charcuterie board before dinner, and we were sampling cheeses and talking to the cheesemonger for what felt like years. Then we spent the rest of the day arranging the charcuterie board and making dinner before our guests arrived. 

Niylah asked me my favorite meal and I was stumped. Mom never cooked anything fancy, you know that: we had meat loaf or tuna casserole, spaghetti or hamburger helper, most of the time. (You never complained, even though at your house your mom was probably ordering sushi takeout.) You helped measure the oil or the milk, and put the garlic bread in the oven or mashed the potatoes, and you always helped wash the dishes. 

My mom loved you so much, Clarke, I hope you still talk to her. She never says and I don’t mention it when I call. 

I thought about it for so long Niylah got impatient: “It’s not a test, Bellamy, Christ.” 

I was frozen with my hand on the cart, thinking: my favorite meal has always been those bologna and cheese sandwiches you used to make after school, on white bread with a swipe of mustard and mayo. Me and Murphy, we were the stereotypical growing boys, always starving. You, Jasper, and Raven were fine with Red Vines and filling your water bottles from the tap but Murphy never had lunch and I’d had lunch and was still hungry so you’d go in the kitchen like a mom and I still remember that look of pleasure you’d get on your face as you handed over the paper plates. Like you’d done something right. 

Not my favorite because it was anything special, no, my favorite because you made it, and you made it with love. 

I told Niylah pot roast eventually, and she made a really good one, with mashed potatoes and gravy, carrots and corn. Echo came over (I don’t know what’s going on with me and Echo, I really don’t, so please don’t ask.) and Lincoln came in with a present. It ended up being really fun. We played some games, and no one drank, but we still ended up laughing so loudly in the wee hours of the morning that the guy who lives next door thumped on the wall.

This letter’s too long, and I have work in like four hours. Listen, Princess: I’m not miserable. And it feels good. 

Still wish I could be laying on the lawn again and you’d come out of the house with one of those sandwiches. I’d take that over pot roast any day. 

P.S. Lincoln’s gift was a book about forgiving yourself. I’m not ready for it yet, but I tucked it away with that copy of The Iliad you gave me for my birthday senior year. It’s funny ‘cause I forgot so much the night I ran away...but I didn’t forget that. 

5/30/18

Hey Clarke, the semester’s almost over and I have straight As. First time in my whole damn life, and through some kind of miracle, I did it without you. 

It’s amazing what I can accomplish when I feel like these grades, these semesters, are the only thing standing between me and getting back to you. I’m a little more than halfway through, and that seems crazy, impossible. I can’t be so close to coming home, can I? 

Here’s what I’ve been thinking about lately: that football championship game, junior year. You decorated tee shirts for yourself and our friends. It was damn cold, I remember shivering on the sidelines when I wasn’t playing, but I saw you up in the stands with Jasper and Raven. They’d put their coats on, but you weren’t having any of it: everyone was going to see my name and number on your shirt, and know you belonged to me. Or maybe the other way around, I belonged to you. Red and gold glitter in your hair; you’d pulled your curls up into little buns with red ribbons, and you were in the first throng of people cheering in the stands, sometimes right up against the bars, jumping up and down, screaming my name. 

I couldn’t concentrate, I had to tune you out. It didn’t matter, though, we lost by a field goal in the last couple of minutes. We were straggling tearfully back towards the locker room, me and Murphy, with our helmets in our hands, when you came running up, threw your arms around my neck, and whispered your condolences into my ear, whispered how sorry you were, whispered you knew I was disappointed, but there was always next year.

Girls usually wait outside the locker room for their boyfriends, let us get out of our stinky uniforms, take a quick shower, but you didn’t care at all about that, Clarke, you knew I’d be devastated, and you just had to tell me you understood. 

Sometimes when I think about things I didn’t like about you, I get caught in a trap--I start to think I never loved you at all, that I’m an idiot, that I’m focused on getting back to someone who wasn’t right for me, a spoiled rich girl with too much anger in her--

Then I remember shit like that football game, remember looking up into the stands and seeing you there for me, for me, for me. Remember you throwing your arms around my dirty neck and pressing your face against my damp, sweaty hair and not caring about those things, just needing me to know that you loved me. 

I have a million examples like that one, and that night was special, Clarke. It was real. 

We were real. 

7/2/18

i had a drink tonight i had two drinks i had too many drinks, as many as i wanted.  
i’m supposed to be sorry i’m supposed to feel guilty but i just feel a little numb the guilt must be mixed up with all the guilt i feel about you princess and the alcohol must be making me feel numb i dunno. couldn’t figure out how to get home from the bar had to call echo and then princess i think i might have betrayed you but that’s silly right cause how many boys and girls have you slept with in the past few years bet it’s been a few bet you don’t think of me first.  
hope you don’t think of me first cause that’s not fair to you at all.  
five years is too much too many just like the drinks i had tonight and maybe the similarity is exactly why i’m drunk right now clarke i saw you in jasper’s photos with a girl who has brown hair and a dimple just like yours and i’m awful and wish you’d feel guilty clarke i wish you’d feel guilty when you look at her i wish you wished she was me every time she laughed at your jokes cause thing is princess you used to say i love your laugh bellamy i love your mouth and then you’d kiss me every time you’d always kiss me.  
princess i was trying not to be an alcoholic but lincoln said you’re always an alcoholic bellamy you just don’t let it ruin your life anymore you don’t drink and things’ll be better yeah better princess that’s what he said but today last week it just didn’t feel better at all because you’re smiling at that brown haired girl just like you used to smile at me and i hate her hate you don’t hate you wanna hate you wish i could hate you.  
oh princess, do you feel the same way about me? cause i’m going back to bed with echo tomorrow and again and again until i forget about you, i swear i am.  
but i’m a liar and you know that. 

8/5/18

Went back to AA today, Princess. 

Lincoln was glad to see me. 

9/14/18

Hey Clarke,

We had so much fun at that camp we went to together every summer from sixth to twelfth grade. Jasper hated it, he’d always end up with some tragic, annoying heat rash or get pushed into the lake. Raven and Murphy would always end up off together with some rebellious, ridiculous group of kids who insisted on playing pranks the whole time--that year they created a makeshift shaving cream bomb that went off in your face was fucking hilarious, but I must have laughed too hard because Murphy duct-taped everything I owned to the ceiling the same night. 

You remember this shit too, right? I had to peel my boxers down with my fingernails. I considered never speaking to him again, I really did.

By high school it felt like we’d always been at that camp and we’d always be there, and yeah, I remember how hard we all cried the last summer…

It seems like some of my best memories of you are all looped up with the big log cabins and the lake where one counselor would always be that dick who criticized the skimpiness of someone’s bathing suit. (Why is there always one of those guys? I know you’ll say misogyny and you’re right but while it annoyed me back then, it really pisses me off now.) (How many women’s studies-type classes did you take in college? I’m gonna ask you for real one day and I bet it’s a bunch.) Camp was only ten days out of our summer, and yet it looms so large and long in my mind.

Maybe because I kissed you for the first time there, our legs all tangled together as we treaded water, swimming way later than we were allowed to, as the sun sank into the horizon in the distance and you said breathlessly, _Bellamy, we should really get out, it’s almost time for_ \-- and I said, _shut up Princess_ , and you drew back with a _why_ and I told you, _because I wanna kiss you_ and you gave me a grin and put your arms around my shoulders. Your eyelashes were wet, I remember, and you said, _well, kiss me then, I’ve been waiting for ages_. 

It was only about two weeks after I’d figured out I was in love with you in the first place, Princess, but you’d been waiting for ages.

I thought about asking you when you knew you loved me, but instead I kissed you, and then kissed you again, even though you were giggling. 

Your whole life, Clarke, I think you were waiting for me to catch up. 

I’m gonna catch up now, Princess, just wait and see. 

11/1/18

Princess,

Austin has the most changeable weather I’ve ever experienced. You can get these days where it’s forty, fifty, sixty degrees colder or hotter than it was the day before. Yesterday was Halloween and Echo and I dressed as Bonnie and Clyde--her idea, and she was very pleased with herself for coming up with it--and I was sweating so hard I dropped the damn tommy gun, and she decided not to wear the wig at the last minute. Then the wind started blowing like crazy around midnight, and the temperature started dropping in huge chunks. By 3AM we were shivering, ditched the party, and went home. 

It’s 2PM today, and breathing in feels like inhaling shards of glass, it’s so cold and damp. Niylah always laughs at me when I can’t stop talking about the weather. She’ll say, “This is nothing, Bellamy.” But she did say I should be prepared for a rough winter. Not a good sign we’re having such a cold day so early, according to her.

But one thing I’ve learned about this city--people like to act like they’re the fucking Farmer’s Almanac, reading the signs to predict the season. There’s no predicting the seasons, just like there’s no predicting how much I’m gonna want a drink from day to day. 

I really want one today, Princess, and I can’t quite pinpoint why. 

Though, I did see you dressed up as Luna Lovegood, and that brunette you hang around with now dressed as Hermione, on Jasper’s Insta. You looked cute, even though we both know full well you’re a Slytherin. 

You used to say I was a Gryffindor, but at this point I think we can both admit that I’m neither brave nor chivalrous. It’s not very chivalrous for me to have yanked my arm from you when you were trying to keep from falling down the stairs, is it? Do you know how fucked up it is that I managed to push and pull you down the stairs? I think about that all the time, how if I hadn’t been so mad, I would have grabbed at you, too, we would’ve hung onto each other, you’d never have fallen. But instead I was so focused on making you feel bad that I jerked my arm away...when you weren’t trying to hang onto me because you loved me or because you didn’t want me to hit Murphy (because I kept thinking, you’ve expended so much energy protecting Jasper, there’s no way in hell I’m letting you get away with trying to protect Murphy in the same way, and I was thinking, he only defended you because he’s in love with you, and you’re only defending him for the same reason. Why was I so jealous, Clarke? You never showed any inclination towards anyone aside from me.) anyway, you weren’t holding onto me because of the fight, because of the punch I was about to let go. You were holding onto me because you were going to fall, and in my anger, I shook you off like you were no better than a fly. 

Murphy made this...he made this noise, when you fell. As if he’d opened his mouth to call your name, but he was so shocked and terrified that nothing came out other than a croaking gasp. 

I couldn’t even do that. 

I wanted to sit down and cry when the ambulance left. All this time, all these years later, when I think of that moment, I want to cry again. 

Hell, I look at you, dressed in matching costumes with that girl who has the dimple and the pretty brown hair, and I want to cry now. That’s so ridiculous. I wore matching costumes with a girl who has pretty brown hair last night, too! It feels different, though, ‘cause I have no intention of falling in love with Echo, and I can tell from your face when I see you in these pictures that all you want is to be in love with her.

Of course, wanting to be in love and actually being in love are two totally different things. 

I need to believe that you don’t know how to be in love with anyone but me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: Sunrise/Sunset/Bright Eyes (I'm committed to this theme of Bright Eyes songs for every chapter.)
> 
> So, now we've heard about the incident on the landing from Clarke's POV and Bellamy's. She really gave him a break, and thinks that it was a total accident. Now, it was an accident caused by his drunken rage, and she won't give an inch on that, but she still calls it an accident in her mind, you know?
> 
> But Bellamy himself? Takes all the responsibility, blames himself, and even goes the next step and says that he pretty much did it on purpose, because he didn't realize why Clarke was clutching at him. Oof. I'm really stoked for a few chapters out when I can write their important conversation on this topic. 
> 
> This whole chapter is less "pure angst" and more "self recriminations" mixed with memories
> 
> It broke my heart to write his relapse letter, but alcoholics and addicts don't just start going to meetings and then they're all good. 
> 
> To my reader who loves the small town stuff: there's a lot of it in this chapter. To my readers who have never lived in a small town: yes, the football players would 100% be crying after they lost the game. 
> 
> Love your comments more than french fries, and truly enjoy my discussions with you guys and hearing your theories, questions, and thoughts on the story in general.


	11. You're a Beautiful Boy (you're a sweet little kid)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Clarke has no self control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lawsy Jesus, here we go. 
> 
> Warning: consequences of child abuse discussed in this chapter. Y'all wanted to know what the adults were up to when Clarke fell down the stairs? Well, now you're going to find out exactly what sort of adults we're dealing with, here.

Clarke was sixteen the day Bellamy’s father tried to kill him.

To this day, it’s the most terrified she’s ever been, and the most angry, and the most sad. 

She’ll never forget it: she was at Raven’s--and thank God she was, because Raven’s house was less than five minutes from Bellamy’s, while Clarke lived in an entirely different neighborhood, out on the outskirts of town, in a big house sitting on a couple of acres. 

She and Raven had AP History III together, and their final was coming up quickly as the end of the school year approached. Bellamy and Murphy had regular History III, and Jasper was working on some kind of Science Fair -- so it was just Clarke and Raven, heads bent over a study guide, when Bellamy called.

“Princess,” he said breathlessly when she picked up. “Princess?”

His voice was all wrong, nasal and clogged. “What’s going on?” Clarke had demanded, dropping her pen. 

“My dad…” Bellamy sounded so pained. “I don’t know what to do. He’s after Octavia. Something’s wrong. He wants to hurt her, he hit my mom, he hit me--I’m locked up in my room with O and I don’t know how to keep her safe--” his voice scaled _high high higher_ and Clarke already had her keys and ran blindly for her car with Raven questioning her all the way through the halls and out into the driveway. 

“It’s Bellamy,” Clarke started the car as she yelled it, and then, to her phone, “I”m at Raven’s. I’ll be there in three minutes. Think you can get past him and out the door?”

“I don’t know, I don’t know, he’s so mad--” Bellamy sounded nearly hysterical. 

“Bellamy? You can. I know you can. Be the football player, avoid the lineman.”

She stayed on the line with him until she pulled in, and she could hear his father raging in the distance, she could hear Aurora trying to pacify the man, their conversation lowering, then rising again. Clarke tried not to let her voice quake when she told Bellamy to hang up and put his phone in his pocket and run for the door. 

He burst out of the house with Octavia clinging to his neck like a monkey, practically threw the little girl into the backseat. Clarke urged him to get in the back with his sister as Saul Blake came out of the house screaming threats. She tore away from Saul’s red face while Bellamy was still trying to get the car door closed, his fingers scrabbling at the handle. 

Clarke planned to drive the pair to Raven’s, but then she got a look at Bellamy in the rearview mirror, his eye purple and swelling, nose obviously broken, and when he drew his shaking hand across his bloody chin Clarke could see that his ring and pinky finger were disjointed. 

Instead of Raven’s, Clarke drove to the Emergency Room, where she knew her mother was on duty. 

Dr. Abby Griffin wasn’t overly fond of Clarke’s tight bond with Bellamy and Murphy. Raven and Jasper were fine, Abby liked them very much, they were smart and driven and clearly going places, but Bellamy and Murphy would be lucky to get into Polis U, and that just wasn’t good enough for Abby. But Clarke’s father Jake was a far less judgmental creature, and a fan of Bellamy’s character, so he issued the edict: Abby was not to interfere with Clarke’s friendships. 

But that day, so far in the past, Abby was kind. Clarke held Octavia in her lap and Abby gently cleaned Bellamy’s face, straightened his nose and packed it with cotton, and splinted his fingers. She checked him all over for further injuries, questioned him closely to make sure she wasn’t missing anything; then she disappeared. Clarke and Bellamy would find out later that she’d called the police and her husband to check on Aurora Blake. 

Abby sent Bellamy and Octavia home with Clarke so they wouldn’t see how badly Saul had hurt their mom, told Clarke to order whatever takeout she wanted, to buy anything she needed for their houseguests. 

When Bellamy, plied with painkillers, fell asleep on Clarke’s bed, and Octavia was stationed in front of cartoons, Clarke went into the bathroom and sobbed. All the adrenaline was wearing off, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t forget Bellamy’s bloody face, his shaking hands. 

Clarke’s twenty-six and she still hasn’t forgotten. Bellamy said he sees her at the bottom of the stairs in his nightmares? Clarke sees Bellamy, having freshly turned 17, in the backseat of the car with blood on his chin and tears in his eyes. 

Lexa woke her up from so many nightmares. She’d say crankily, “you were calling out for fucking Bellamy again.”

Lexa didn’t know enough about Bellamy: _One of my best friends growing up_ , Clarke told her, _my high school boyfriend. It was bad, in the end_. 

And Lexa, a woman she met well after college, simply could not understand why Clarke was constantly dreaming about Bellamy from high school, why Clarke was guarded, why Clarke had constructed The Great Wall of China around her heart. 

Maybe she would have understood if Clarke told her the story, but Clarke simply didn’t want to, couldn’t figure out how to without making Bellamy into a villain. 

She was unwilling to do that, because when she thought of him she didn’t see the guy who knocked her down the stairs.

No, she saw the broken, beautiful boy whose father nearly killed him the last week of junior year. 

Clarke taps her fingernail hard on the desk. She’s slammed the cover of Bellamy’s notebook shut and pushed it away, like she can protect herself from its contents. Voices are getting loud in the hall as the History Department meeting breaks up, and she briefly hopes that someone will talk Mrs. Byrne down the hall, so she won’t peek in on Clarke.

Clarke should go home, she should put the notebook away, and sit with the thought of Bellamy, agonizingly young, sleeping in his car and trying to figure out how to get a new Social Security Card. 

Clarke has always thought that she suffered in a way Bellamy couldn’t possibly understand, in the days after the accident. Here, with these letters waiting for her, she realizes that she might have been very wrong. 

Bellamy has her classroom door open and is in the room before she can hide the notebook or compose her tear-stained face. He takes in the scene, bites his lip, then nods at her: “Saw your light on," He says quietly. "Yeah, this is kinda what I thought you might be doing here.” 

“Get out, Bellamy. I’m going home, I was just...putting things away.”

But when she puts her hand on the notebook, she can’t bear to stow it in the drawer yet. 

Bellamy doesn’t leave, in fact, he comes towards her, drags the chair she has stashed in the corner up to her desk, and sits in it, propping his ankle on the opposite knee. 

“How far did you get?” He asks her quietly. 

Clarke has to work to not clench her fists, to not yell. 

“Not far,” she whispers. “First letter.”

He jerks his chin up at her, something uncomfortable, something scared in his eyes: “Why are you crying?” 

In her mind, she gets up, swipes the notebook across the table, and tells Bellamy what he can do with his damn letters. 

In reality, she brokenly says, “Bellamy, you could have come home,” while wiping tears that won’t stop falling. “It’s fucking heartbreaking, all this time later, to read you telling me that you’re sleeping in your car--you were so young, we were so young--”

He drops his conversational posture, reaches for her hand, “Clarke, I don’t need you to feel sorry for me, I just want you to understand--”

She jumps out of her chair, “Well, I don’t! I don’t understand at all! Instead of just dealing with the consequences, you ran away, and you hurt me but even worse, you hurt yourself!”

He pushes back and stands up, too. “Even _worse_? Even worse, Clarke? It wasn’t worse! You were having surgeries upon surgeries, Jasper said. How many surgeries, Clarke?”

“Seven,” she replies faintly. “Seven, all in a row, fast as they could, so I could go to Troit. And I had to...like almost immediately they told me I would have to relearn some things. I ended up able to grasp the pens with my right hand, but not enough fine motor function to write, or draw either, really. I knew it was probably going to be that way, but I was still devastated at the time.”

Bellamy jaw is clenched. “Our situations were not the same. I did that to you. I deserved that time I had to sleep in my car. I wasn’t suffering, I was--it was penance.”

“I didn’t need your penance, Bellamy,” and her chest has a sobbing hitch to it, “I needed you.” 

“I needed you, too! But I didn’t deserve you!” Bellamy’s got tears in his eyes. 

“Didn’t _I_ deserve you?” Clarke doesn’t mean to, but she’s nearly screaming. “Didn’t _I_ deserve _you_ , Bellamy?” 

He closes the space between them with three quick steps, and wraps his arms around her shoulders. 

She doesn’t want to return his embrace, but he feels so good. Her arms fit so perfectly around his waist, her hands feel just meant to flatten against his back. 

They stand like that for what feels like hours, their first hug in eight years.

“I don’t forgive you,” she tells him, her face buried in his chest, and it seems so silly, when she’s holding and being held.

“I don’t forgive me, either,” he replies, his voice low and rough, “I never have.” 

“I need to be angry at you,” Clarke whispers, “I need it, don’t you understand?”

Bellamy moves back just far enough to tilt Clarke’s chin up, so she’s looking in his face. “You can be as angry as you want, Clarke, but anger doesn’t last forever, can’t protect you forever.” 

Clarke dares to hope: “Do I need to be protected from you, Bellamy? Or are you really different now, are you really here to stay?”

His hands tighten on her arms, he nearly shakes her. “I’m never leaving again. I came back for you, to show you I’m different. I’m a better person, now.” He moves his hands to cup her jaw. “I swear it, Clarke.” 

Tears are making it hard for Clarke to see, but she thinks he’s crying too. 

She opens her mouth but Bellamy closes his lips over hers before she can say a word. 

Clarke remembers their first kiss, the summer after ninth grade. Bellamy had been acting just a little different for a couple of weeks. Clarke couldn’t pin down what had changed, exactly, but his smiles were a little more private, his glances just a little longer. 

They were flirting a little more overtly, their touches were lingering, and Clarke had wanted that sort of attention from Bellamy for so long--for years, she thinks.

They’d slipped away from a pre-dinner singalong, run along the dock and jumped into the lake holding hands. They were treading water, she’d never forget it, Bellamy was looking out at her from under his lashes, and she was getting cold in the twilight, she said something, all this time later she doesn’t remember what, and he told her to _shut up_. Their legs were tangled together under the water, and she pushed back against his chest because _shut up_? That wasn’t kind, those words weren’t Bellamy’s style of speaking, so she asked why and he’d grinned at her: _because I want to kiss you_. 

The world spun out of control around her. Here it was, the thing she wanted, right at her fingertips. _Well, kiss me then, she’d teased. I’ve been waiting for ages_. 

And she had been waiting for ages, maybe forever. 

And that’s how this kiss feels, too, Bellamy somehow both that boy and this man, and their teeth knock together as they go step-by-step in a dance across the room, Bellamy chasing Clarke’s indecision as she pulls lightly back and then surges forward again. She finally throws her arms around his neck and his hands sit right on her hips where they always did before. 

His lips move across her jaw, down her neck, and she can finally speak, panting: “We shouldn’t do this…”

“Do what, Princess?” He murmurs against her shoulder.

“We’re not these people anymore…” but she doesn’t move away from the heat of his body, the melting feeling his mouth is giving her. 

“I think,” he pushes back the collar of her shirt, “I think, Princess, that this is exactly who we’ve always been.”

Bellamy stretches the neckline over her shoulder and nips at the exposed skin, and Clarke, backed up to the desk where Madi always sits, shakes her head, puts her hands on his chest. “Okay, okay, wait, wait, wait.”

He’s still against her, standing so close and comfortable, like he was always there, like he never left. Then he steps back to examine her face: “You don’t want this?” He doesn’t say it cruelly; he doesn’t sound annoyed.

He does sound hurt, just a little bit. 

“We can’t slot back into our old lives like puzzle pieces, Bellamy. We need to start over. And when people are at the beginning? They don’t make out like sexually repressed teenagers in an empty classroom.” Clarke sighs, runs her hands over her face and rubs her eyes. “We’re both adults now, and we haven’t known each other as adults.” 

He cups her jaw again. “Clarke, there is no universe in which I don’t know you.”

That kills Clarke, she’s dead, buy her a damn coffin, and she pushes at the aching spot over her heart. She leans her head against Bellamy’s shoulder. 

It belongs there, after all. 

She can feel his chest rise and fall when he sighs. “You’re right,” he murmurs against her temple. “I know you’re right, but I hate it.”

“Hate won’t protect you, Bellamy,” Clarke’s always been able to do a pitch-perfect imitation of him, and that hasn’t changed over the years, not one bit. 

Bellamy laughs, pulls at her bun. “Okay, neither of us can protect ourselves with negative emotions. So what are we doing, Clarke? Where do we go next?”

Clarke shakes her head. “I’m not sure? I mean, there’s a lot to this--”

“And you’re terrified of what Raven and Murphy will think if they find out you’re giving me another chance…”

“I can handle them,” Clarke says, suddenly tough as nails. “But, yeah. You have a long way to go with Raven and Murphy. They were standing next to you, if you’ll remember.”

“Trust me, Clarke, I’ll never forget. And you have a long way to go, yourself.” Bellamy touches the notebook. “I--I really need you to finish reading this.”

The pain that flashes across her heart is nearly too much, and Clarke shakes her head: “No, I don’t think so, Bellamy. I, um, I don’t want to, and I can see how hard you were on yourself with every word.”

“You’re only just getting started,” Bellamy reminds her. “You’re missing--like you’re missing the whole part where I get better, when I make friends, when I go to AA and when I go to school and get my first job…” He bites his lip, repeats himself. “When I get _better_ , Clarke. I want you to read about what happens when I get _better_.”

“I can see that you’re better, Bellamy…”

“I’ve been here for a week, Clarke. Not even a week. And shit, you broke down before Octavia. I wasn’t expecting that at all.”

“I’m old enough to remember how you felt, the way your eyes look when you’re peering at me under your eyelashes, how your hands were warm on my waist when we were dancing at Homecoming when we were sixteen--exactly the way they felt on my waist when we were dancing at homecoming when we were twenty-six. Octavia, she doesn’t have those tactile memories. In fact, I’d guess that she barely remembers you at all.”

Clarke wishes nearly immediately that she hadn’t said that. The guilt and hurt on Bellamy’s face is too much for her, especially when she’s just been kissing him, just been holding him, dancing across the classroom with their hips pressed together. 

Just been making up for eight years, as if they could be made up for--as if every moment in the past eight years hasn’t been colored by Bellamy and Clarke’s mistakes. 

“I’m sorry,” she blurts, “that came out all wrong.”

“No, it’s--you’re right, and my mom said the same thing. And I think a lot of O’s memories are probably pretty fucked up, because of our dad…”

Clarke’s fingers tighten on the desk furiously, her whole body goes stiff. 

“Hey,” Bellamy strokes her cheek, “hey, he’s been gone for a long time.” 

“Yeah, but he ruined--he ruined your family before he left, and I’ll never forgive him for that,” Clarke finds her hands shaking, just like Bellamy’s did, all those years ago. “You can’t understand, because you couldn’t see yourself, back then. But I looked at you, the way he hurt you. And I’ll never be able to unsee it.”

Bellamy’s face is pained. “Don’t you get it, Princess? That’s exactly how I feel about seeing you, about that night.”

“Bellamy, I don’t need you to be sorry about the accident--it was only that, an accident. You were drunk and it didn’t have to happen, but it was still an accident. What I need, what I really need from you? Is for you to understand that what broke my heart was the fact that you left me here, you didn’t help me recover.”

His head is hanging low, shame written all over his face. 

“But, please understand, I _will_ forgive you. As long as you stay.” Her hands run down his arms, and Clarke never thought she’d get the chance to say these words: “Just stay, Bellamy. This time, _stay_.”

He lifts his eyes to hers, runs his thumb along her jawline. “I swear, Clarke. This time, I’m not going anywhere.”

She wants nothing more than to believe him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: Take It Easy (Love Nothing)/Bright Eyes
> 
> *SCREECH*
> 
> A little too easy, maybe? Well, we have a long way to go, and two friends who definitely AREN'T going to let Bellamy off the hook with a kiss and a promise. 
> 
> And is he actually off the hook? We'll see. 
> 
> Bellamy's letters up in a couple of hours! I accidentally slept in WAY too late today again. (This girl needs to get back to work, cause without it I have no sense of time in any way, shape, or form.)


	12. We Were a Gold Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More Bellamy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some revelations, some memories, some mistakes.

11/6/18

Hey Princess, Remember when Octavia was born? We were ten, and in the middle of the night Raven’s mom showed up and whisked me away. 

You were spending the night at Raven’s, already, and you were kind of hyped when I showed up. Mrs. Reyes explained gently that my little sister was being born, and you bounced on your toes and clapped your hands. “Wow, Bellamy,” you whispered, your eyes all shiny, “this is so exciting!”

I didn’t think it was ‘so exciting,’ honestly. I’d been an only child for ages, and I was not thrilled at the thought of a baby coming along and messing up everything. But Mom had said I could pick the baby’s name, and I had a list of Roman names, I still remember some of them: Augusta, Antonia, Camilla, Julia, Lucia, Mariana, Octavia, Valentina. That last one means brave, and I was really leaning towards it. 

So, stupidly, I showed you and Raven my list. Raven was obsessed with Lucia, which means light. She literally spent the whole night trying to convince me that Lucia was the perfect name, and then she finally dropped off to sleep around 2AM. You had your head on my shoulder and your hair was all gathered in a bun on the top of your head and it was tickling my cheek, but I kind of liked it. We stayed up for hours whispering about the names, and somehow I ended up in your lap, and you were running your fingers through my hair. “I like Octavia,” you said, somewhere around 4AM. “It matches your middle name.” 

I crawled into my Transformers sleeping bag not long after that, thinking about Augustus’s sister Octavia. She was known for her loyalty, and I thought to myself: If I have to have a little sister, at least she could be loyal to me and never tattle. 

It’s amazing what kids think of, what they value.

When my mom called, early, way too early in the morning, I looked at you and Raven, sleeping on the pull-out couch, and I told my mom that I wanted the baby’s name to be Octavia Lucy. 

Mom kept her promise and that’s what’s on O’s birth certificate, in case you don’t remember. 

I’m thinking of my little sister today, and I’m thinking of you. 

12/3/18

Clarke,

AA meetings are really crowded these days. The holidays are tough for everyone, and I understand, because on Thanksgiving I woke up so depressed. Niylah was giving me the eyes, man those eyes suck. I saw them on Miller and I saw them on you--and I probably saw them on Raven, Jasper, and Murphy too, but that just didn’t matter to me at the time. 

Plus, Jasper was always giving people eyes. His were so big, dark, and often just ridiculously scared. I never thought we had that much to be scared of, but maybe when you’re skinny and soft like he was, there’s just a lot in the world to worry about. You always watched out for him--he didn’t have to be so petrified all the time.

And I never thought he’d be scared of me, but in the end, you all probably were. 

Oof, I don’t want to think about that today. 

Anyway Niylah was giving me the eyes and she kinda yelled at me: “You’re coming to Thanksgiving at my dad’s, like it or fucking lump it. Okay?”

I felt like a sullen teenager: “Fine. Whatever.” 

That was definitely the right decision, ‘cause it completely changed the headspace I was in. I mean, her dad’s so nice, always, but he’s one of those guys who’s totally into holidays. He’s so fucking jolly, but I like that. But he let me help with the mashed potatoes and the stuffing, and he was telling me all these childhood stories about Niylah, and there was oldies music blaring in the kitchen and Niylah and her cousins were yelling at each other cheerfully in the other room. 

It felt good, and I let it feel good. 

Still would rather have been with my mom, meticulously cutting out leaves for the top of the pies. Remember that Thanksgiving, I think it was sophomore year? Both of your parents had to work, my dad was on duty, and you’d gone to Jasper’s the year before, so you came to mine instead. You knew the drill, too, you put on one of my mom’s aprons and asked how you could help. Octavia was watching the Macy’s Parade and I was sitting on the kitchen counter running my mouth and you locked eyes with me and said, “Bellamy, put on an apron and get to work.” 

Another girl might have told me to get out of the way, get out of the kitchen. Not you. You handed me the dough you’d just finished and a rolling pin, Mom dug out the cookie cutters. You showed me this picture of an apple pear pie with like twenty leaves forming the top crust and you were so casual, “You can totally emulate this, right?” and I remember trying to get the thickness so perfect--

Princess, why was that the best Thanksgiving of my life? Just the four of us--me, you, Mom, and O, and too much food but we were peaceful, we were happy, and I put my hand on your thigh under the table...I thought I was subtle but my mom must have known. 

The more I think about when we were kids, the more I realize that if any of our parents were paying just the tiniest bit of attention, they could have known everything that was going on, everything that was happening, so quickly. But they were all working so much, all so preoccupied and busy--only Jasper’s parents had even a moment to spare. 

That’s probably why we never went to his place.

I spend more and more time lost in memories of you lately. My Prof loves when I write short stories of you, he always has so much to comment on or ask about when I include you. I gave you a pseudonym because I write about you so often; I’ve been calling you Eliza. 

I don’t think he believes me when I say you went to college and we lost touch. It’s one of those half-truths. One of those technicalities that you were so fond of: you did go to college, after all, and we did lose touch, didn’t we? 

Prof says I should put together a book of short stories about our past, Princess, and try to get it published. I know I’m casual here in my letters, but apparently my short stories are pretty decent. Maybe I’ll show them to you someday. 

I hope you don’t mind that I stole all my best stories from our lives, but we sure did have a hell of a time, didn’t we? 

I wonder if you remember these things the way I do. I’m gonna ask you when I come home. 

12/15/18

Hey Princess, how old were we when Murphy’s mom died? Maybe fourteen? I can’t remember. Niylah was talking about her mom’s funeral today--it’s the anniversary of the day she died--and I had this sudden flash of you all in black. It was cold, I do remember that, so it must have been fall or winter. I was wearing a suit that didn’t quite fit--You had a black wool coat with big buttons, and one of those black sleeveless shift dresses with a cardigan over it. You looked composed. You looked adult. At the church you dropped your coat somewhere and you were standing next to Murphy with your hand in his behind the back pew, and people kept trying to talk to him. 

Me, Raven, Jasper, and Harper, too, we were huddled together while our parents did whatever parents do at funerals--they were off somewhere--and I remember feeling so uncomfortable, not sure what the right move would be, but you knew, of course you knew, Princess, that Murphy needed someone to hold his hand. 

He didn’t know what to say to all the people giving him condolences--who knows how to respond to that stuff when they’re fourteen? 

Well, you did, Princess, ‘cause you were hardcore trained in those etiquette matters. And when I made my way to you, someone was telling Murphy how sorry they were, how lovely his mom was, and Murphy just stared at them. But I heard you say, “the family appreciates your condolences so much,” with one of those sad smiles, you were good at that, knowing exactly what to put on your face for any occasion. 

Then I heard you say it to the next person. Then again. Then again. You had on tights and ballet flats, and you itched the back of your leg with your shoe and you were getting tired, I saw you whisper something in Murphy’s ear, and the two of you went and hid behind the altar curtains. I found you sitting on the organ pew, Murphy’s face covered in tears and buried in your shoulder--no, in that soft spot right below it, where I’ve cried a dozen times. 

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen him cry since then, not really, just after losing football games--and it’s not the same kind of crying. Murphy’s tough but not the way you are, just under the surface. No, Murphy’s brand of tough sits on top of his skin. 

Usually when I think of things and they hurt it has to do with you, or my family, but today when I thought of that day my chest physically ached. After his mom died, Murphy had no one to go to bat for him, you know? And you tried, Princess, you tried so hard starting at that funeral. 

I know why he was in love with you, and while it started long before that day, it’s just such a perfect example of the times you showed him a brand of mercy he never got at home. 

“The family appreciates your condolences so much.” 

That smile, Princess. God, that smile. 

Sometimes I saw the fake smiles you put on for other people and felt so grateful that you had a real one for me.

But other times I wondered if the ones you had for me were real at all. 

12/25/18

Hate Christmas still, Princess, and Niylah went to her dad’s and we had a knock-down-drag-out fight over me going with her and I didn’t want to and I kept telling her I didn’t want to and she finally yelled, “if I leave you here, I know you’re going to drink!” and the joke was on her because I’d already started drinking. 

I just haven’t had a lot, just a few shots really Princess, I’ve got it under control, look at me, I can still capitalize the right letters and use the right punctuation. 

The thing about Christmas is how much I miss you, but also how much I miss my mom and Octavia, and the traditions we had, our stockings over the fireplace and playing board games on the coffee table, and you hanging out til the last possible minute, us opening presents at nearly midnight, me and you. And you’d put a present for Octavia and a present for my mom under the tree. 

The Christmas of junior year you gave me that huge book about ancient Roman history and you wrote in the cover this long letter and it included something like (cause i don’t have the book with me, wish i had thought to bring it) “I love to see you learn, Bellamy.” 

Where are you now Princess cause I’m learning so much. I’m in school, I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing and I’ve had some drinks today but I’m mostly getting better, I wish you could see that. Sometimes I wish I could rip one of these pages out and send them to you. Maybe the letter about when I realized I was in love with you? Maybe the one about our first kiss? Do you wanna remember this stuff? Does it break your heart? It breaks mine today, it kills me inside a little bit. 

Sometimes I still play guitar, do you? Are we too old to play angsty songs? Prof said that writing songs and poetry is “juvenile” and I should focus on my short stories but that was one thing we always had in common, you and me, we liked to play our guitars and sometimes we’d write songs or you’d turn poetry into a song. 

Bet you don’t tell anyone that anymore--bet you think it’s juvenile too. 

I was trying to learn this Avett Brothers song, Laundry Room, and part of the song says, “tonight I’ll burn the lyrics, cause every chorus was your name” and Clarke every chorus is your name every story starts and ends with you every memory I ever have you’re right there you’re right there honey and i remember shit i remember when we spent a week trying to figure out when no one would be home because we loved each other and you decided--YOU decided princess that it was time for us to belong to each other you know what i mean you know what i’m talking about we figured out when your mom and dad would be gone for sure and princess you decided and i kept asking you if it was okay and you said, are you sure you’re okay? with that furrowed V in between your eyes and i took my clothes off, princess, and i said, yeah, i’m okay and there was this smile this real smile and i know i said that i wasn’t sure if your smiles for me were real but this smile? this time? when you said that i could belong to you? that was real Princess that was so real. 

i’ve had too much to drink and niylah’s gonna yell at me and i know that because i’m looking at my guitar and remembering the way you looked strumming the strings and the way you looked under me all that time ago and the sound of my name when you said it like there were promises you were making just with those three syllables, princess, you said it so prettily, it sounded so right in your mouth. 

when echo says my name i want it to sound like that but it just doesn’t, no one says my name right princess only you. yesterday she gave me a present and i felt like, i dunno princess, whole thing felt so generic i gave her a bracelet with an arrow on it which i considered thoughtful but she just got this look on her face and then she gave me a smile and talk about fake smiles princess this one was a-level fake. 

she gave me cologne and i think i’m gonna break up with her princess cause this is fuckin ridiculous. 

it’s been a year so here’s my question princess if you’d known me for a year would you give me cologne? nah i can’t ask you that cause you knew me for fourteen years and you won’t know how to pretend like you don’t. at least I don’t think so, even when i meet you again if you’re still mad at me i still don’t think you can pretend clarke i just don’t. we will always be these people we just will i will always love you and you will always love me.

wait i meant to say i will always know you and you will always know me but either one works.

you’re gonna love me princess you’re gonna know me you’d never give me cologne you’re too thoughtful it would be a real present like the roman book or like the iliad. 

someday i’m still gonna give you my mom’s sapphire ring cause she gave it to me to give to you so long ago. she said i know that your princess means so much to you so when the time is right, bellamy, when the time is right give it to her. but then the time was never right and it feels so unfair, it feels so wrong, everything feels wrong without you princess even all this time later.

i’m not better.

i’m kinda better. 

i need to be more better. 

christmas is the worst day, princess, no matter what i do i can’t escape it. i miss my mom, princess, i miss her aprons and how she always smelled like soap and the way she’d slip her arm around my waist and call me her handsome son and she’d call me honey and sometimes i’d accidentally call you honey and you’d blush. my mom would say we were special we had something other people don’t have, something we should treasure, you know? i wanna treasure you honey i wanna be better please please please princess when i come home can i be better? 

1/4/19

Christ Princess, 

I have a rule about looking at past letters, but I know what I did the last time I wrote you and I want to rip it out and throw it away.

Not gonna do it but it’s tough not to. 

Niylah was pretty upset with me the day after Christmas, and I didn’t know what to tell her. I wanted to try some kind of gesture, even though I’m not good at gestures. But I had already finished the entire bottle, so I just threw it away. 

There’s no alcohol in the house now, but if I really wanted it I’d get it in a heartbeat. Think I’m taking a break from both drinking AND AA. 

I need a break from life, really, but school starts in a week and a half. Taking an advanced writing course and Prof has already told me that I’ll have to self-publish a novella or book. He asked if I would write about Eliza, and I said probably. 

Prof said that if I’d contact you (Eliza) and interview you about your memories of the things I’ve written about he’d give me extra credit, and I said absolutely not. 

But when I see you again and give you these letters and memories, maybe you’ll tell me your version of the events: camp and our first kiss, the night Octavia was born and Murphy’s mom’s funeral. Hiding in D-hall making out the night of the Winter Formal. I want to know how you remember our history, Princess, our past. Us. 

God, I miss you. I miss that us, and I can’t wait til there’s an Us again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Gold Mine Gutted/Bright Eyes (probably one of my top five songs by him)
> 
> Um at what point will I stop tearing up as I write the tougher memories/feelings of my bb Bellamy Augustus Blake?
> 
> I really loved composing the night Octavia was born as well as Mrs. Murphy's funeral. I was struck by the sheer awkwardness of funerals in general, especially for kids--when I was in high school I went to several but I remember the worst one as far as awkwardness goes, was when my Sunday School teacher's mom died. I didn't know her at all, but my Sunday School class wanted to support him, so we all went in a group. Because of school, we were a few minutes late walking in, and the room was full. The ushers started dragging chairs in super loudly while we stood there blushing. At least our Sunday School teacher knew we were there? 
> 
> Oof, that's some small town bullshit for y'all--going to the funeral of someone you don't really know but know tangentially so you really have to go or someone will be hurt or angry with you. 
> 
> ANYWAY there's a lot of really emotional stuff churning up in Bellamy in this chapter and some of it just broke my heart to write. Clarke's gonna catch up pretty quickly when she finally reads his letters, and I'm really excited to write her reactions. 
> 
> Also! Here we see who told Bellamy that poetry is juvenile, and we also see that Clarke used to write poetry and songs too! Bellamy's exactly right, though, Clarke doesn't do any of that anymore, and has no faith in her own talent anyway. I love that she angrily thought, "well you were never any good at that when I knew you," when it's clear that Bellamy is a very talented writer. 
> 
> Anyway! Love your comments more than pepperoni pizza! Let me know what you think!


	13. There Was Love I Meant (there were accidents)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Self control? With Bellamy Blake? What's that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought that I was going to be able to sum this up in 20 chapters but with the dual POV I uh...it's gonna be longer than that, especially when we want to fit in a decent amount of Murven!
> 
> Hey, CONTENT WARNING: in the beginning of this chapter I obliquely talk about Bellamy's awful father having been interested in abusing Octavia sexually. He's never successful due to Aurora and Clarke's protection, but it's discussed. 
> 
> Listen I know I talk about child abuse a lot but I grew up with so much of that shit, and I saw it so much with my friends, and it's just part of that small town bullshit I write about really often. This fic and 'and i hang like a star' have a lot of pieces of my upbringing. I don't seem to be able to leave all that rough stuff out of it.

When Clarke was growing up, her parents didn’t have time for her.

There’s no sad story to it; Her mother was a doctor, her father was a police captain who ran a special investigations unit. Neither of them were ever home. They ran Clarke through an etiquette school, reminded her not to embarrass them, insisted that she be the best at everything she ever attempted, and turned her loose. 

She bounced around: Jasper’s house, Raven’s house, Bellamy’s house. (Not Murphy’s house. _Murphy_ didn’t hang out at Murphy’s house. Not an environment for kids.) After Bellamy’s dad left, they hung out there all the time, because Bellamy’s mom was working, and so there were never any parents to nag them. 

Before that, many times, Aurora Blake had been a mom to all of them. She was soft and kind, she invited stray children to dinner, she didn’t mind if kids spent the night, even Clarke. She worked an overnight shift cleaning some office building, when her husband came home from his job as a plumber. He usually drank himself into an early sleep after dinner, and Clarke and Bellamy would put Octavia on a little pallet in Bellamy’s bedroom. Clarke would lock the door. 

Bellamy never understood why, until long after the day Saul came after Octavia and nearly killed Bellamy in the process. There was something wrong with Saul when it came to Octavia, and Clarke felt the friction, she saw the _off_. It was months after he left that Bellamy finally brought it up to Clarke. She was uncomfortable, made a little movement with her hand that Bellamy couldn’t understand. Eventually she told him: “You would have felt it if you were a girl.” 

Seventeen year old Bellamy couldn’t make that work in his head. He believed her that something was off, but hadn’t felt that in his gut like Clarke had. 

“Are you sure?” He asked her.

“Sure enough,” she told him. “Sure enough.”

Protect Octavia at any cost, that became a theme of Clarke and Bellamy’s adolescence. But Aurora knew something, too, and when she started working more, Octavia went to a child care center outside of the home, Mrs. Glass took care of her all day, and sometimes all night when Bellamy and Clarke were older. 

Clarke’s stomach twists a little when she thinks of that, but things are much the same, she still looks out for Octavia. So she very quietly inquires after Jason Levitt, the Monday following Homecoming.

_Jason’s great_ , Raven tells her.

_Jason’s a total sweetheart_ , Mrs. Byrne says. 

_Jason’s a wonderful kid_ , and Coach Shumway is quite defensive: “why do you ask? Is this because of Octavia Blake? Because we know how those Blake kids are, and--”

“And what?” Clarke asks him icily, “and what, Coach?”

Her tone begs Coach to go further, begs him to try her patience. 

He doesn’t. 

Coach doesn’t know why Clarke’s defending the Blakes, but he does know how scary she can be, how tough. He’s had her as a student and now as a coworker, and she’s no one to be trifled with. 

Clarke isn’t the person she was when she was eighteen, but she’ll fight for a student, and she’ll fight for a program if she thinks the student or the program deserves it.

Bellamy left her classroom on Sunday with a desperate hand clench and a promise of further conversation--after Clarke read the letters. 

Clarke’s been alternating between staring at the notebook and wondering how or if she can convince Octavia (and Murphy, and Raven) to accept her decision to try and forgive Bellamy.

To maybe start again, maybe try again, maybe hug again, maybe kiss again, maybe, maybe, maybe-- 

No, _stupid, stupid, stupid_ , she scolds herself. One hug that felt like home, one stupidly hot makeout session where they skittered across the room like a pair of teenagers who needed just enough time alone to--

Oh Lord, Clarke needs a cold shower and a drink, big time, and she wonders if Raven still has that flask in her desk.

Uh, Clarke still has a flask in her desk, come to think of it, Madi’s flask, but just as Bellamy’s drinking never did a thing to help him, Clarke is pretty sure that cheap vodka won’t actually solve any of her problems. 

When she and Bellamy have swung into the hall to close their classroom doors today, he’s had a secret smile, like he did all those years ago, in the days before their first kiss.

And goddamn Bellamy Blake and his secret smiles, they’re so contagious, all these years later, and Clarke still bites her lip to not give one back, especially when Octavia comes wandering down the hall with a furrowed brow and she slips into Clarke’s space with a hiss: “You’ve been checking out Jason?” she demands, her little hands fisting, “you’re overstepping, Clarke, and I swear to God, I…” 

“You’ll what?” Clarke asks, standing up very straight, the way she does when she’s about to scold her students. “Please, Octavia, tell me what you’re going to do, I’m dying to hear the revenge you’ll take on the woman who’s been, I dunno, basically your older sister since you were born. You know I picked your name, right?”

“Oh, for crying out loud, you bring that up every time I get mad at you…” Octavia’s shoulder’s slump. 

“Hey, if it wasn’t for me you could’ve been Augusta. Or Valentina.” 

Octavia wrinkles her nose. “Augusta, gross.”

“But not Valentina? That was Bellamy’s pick, lo those many years ago.”

“No, that’s not as bad…”

Bellamy, with an eye on his own class, steps into the hall. “Everything okay?”

Octavia pulls back from him, physically, but Clarke can feel it emotionally, too. 

“Get out of here,” his sister snaps angrily. “Clarke and I are talking and you’re not fucking invited.” 

“Language,” Clarke doesn’t even know why she bothers with this reminder, she really doesn’t. 

“I just wanted to make sure you--that Levitt kid--”

“Well, you can just ask Clarke, she seems to know everything about him these days, anyway.” Octavia’s eyes dart to Clarke and she gives a small, bitter smile. “Not that Clarke is speaking to you, either,” she adds as she brushes past him, and he glances at Clarke with pain in his eyes before heading back to his own classroom. 

Guilt sits in Clarke’s stomach like a rock. 

She hasn’t actually lied to anyone, she really hasn’t. No one has asked Clarke if she’s going to forgive Bellamy since Friday night. 

At lunch today, though...Clarke hasn’t decided if she’s going to lie or defend Bellamy. 

She hasn’t decided if she’s going to tell Raven and Jasper that she’s too busy with grading to meet them today at lunch, when she’s not busy at all, but Bellamy’s letters are waiting for her and she promised him she’d read them. 

In what world her promises to Bellamy meant more than her implied promises to Murphy and Raven, Clarke isn’t sure, but when she saw Page 2: 

_5/4/13  
Princess,  
Jasper felt sorry for me and told me how you are.  
I want to drink until I die._

Clarke just couldn’t help herself, she was dying to see what came next, dying to see it with a deep ache that was in her chest, stomach, and thighs.

God, she’d loved him so much back then, and nothing she’d told herself about the fact that he wasn’t coming home had changed that.

Jasper’s words: _We were only kids when it happened. Think of how young seventeen and eighteen year olds seem to us now._

Clarke looks at Octavia’s retreating back and grasps how young a teenager seems now with a knowledge that seems almost painful. 

No, it is painful, it’s painful above all things.

Octavia seems hardened but there’s actually an innocence to it, a lack of experience, the way Octavia just can’t understand what happened when Bellamy left, in exactly the way she doesn’t understand why he’s back. 

Clarke has to pull her fingers back from that girl, from her swinging ponytail and the song lyrics scrawled across her hand and bookended with stars and hearts: _guess i lied/i’m a liar who lies/cause i’m a liar_.

If Bellamy got a look at that he probably wouldn’t have liked it, but there’s something poetic about it to Clarke’s eye. 

A lying liar who lies, Clarke thinks she remembers that from a movie. 

God, she’s getting old. 

Clarke watches Octavia all the way down the hall, wonders how much more mileage she can get out of that whole “I chose your name” story, especially as it’s only half true--Raven chose Lucy, late that night when they were so young. 

But Clarke’s always been good at half truths and technicalities, Bellamy reminded her so on a million occasions, and soon enough she thinks he might remind her again.

If she’s lucky, no, if he’s lucky, dammit. She still has a leg to stand on here, she does, she knows she does.

She lies to Raven about lunch, and that’s the first lie, she should just start counting them, ‘cause Clarke thinks there might be a million to come.

A lying liar who lies, Octavia’s hand said, and Clarke is one, will always be one.

She tells Jasper the truth: “gonna read some of these fucking letters,” her text says. “I might as well.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” comes the half-sanctimonious response, and Clarke kind of wonders if Jasper’s read the damn things. 

_Nah_ , she thinks. _Nah, these are for me_. 

Clarke pulls out fruit and a seltzer water, locks the classroom door. Tough shit to Madi if she wants to hide and do homework. 

For once, for once, for once--Clarke needs a second to herself. Or to herself and Bellamy, and she flips to the third page with a box of Kleenex and her green pen, because she’s for damn sure going to make notes in the margin.

Bellamy may not appreciate that, probably not at all, but this’ll be just like his homework back in 2012. Clarke has things to say, but she refuses to read the notebook while he watches her face, so she’ll say her piece in the blank spots of his pages. 

On 5/19/13 she’s breathless with the realization that he drove nearly all the way home on her birthday, writes, _you could have come home then, too_. To his memories of the 4th of July when they were sixteen, when they made their own fireworks, she writes that there was a rock under her back but she didn’t want to move because he kept kissing her so softly, so sweetly. To his proclamation that he didn’t know how not to love her, she writes, _I didn’t know how not to love you either, you idiot_. 

I don’t, she whispers to herself. I still don’t, and it’s infuriating. 

She’s oddly proud of him for making a friend on 6/27/13, and morbidly curious about what happened between 5/19 and 6/27. 

To _you’re the toughest girl I’ve ever met_ she replies _and you’re the sweetest boy I’ve ever met._

_I failed at keeping you, too_ , she writes in the margins: _We failed at keeping each other_  
.  
To his observation that she was always the one who told him to step back from the edge she scribbles, _but in the end you never listened anyway, Bellamy, so what would be the difference?_

Clarke gets stuck on the entry for 7/1, which begins, _when I called Jasper today_ …

_When_ , she thinks, over and over, trying to make it make sense. _When you called him?  
You were still calling him, three months later?_

Lunch still has 4 minutes, so she peeks her head in his room, and he’s at the desk, poking miserably at a salad from the cafeteria. He looks up, and she can’t help a tiny smile: 

“Uh, since we’re not mortal enemies anymore, I should probably tell you that the caf? It never gets any better. You should bring your own lunch.” 

A rueful grin: “I’m not an idiot, Clarke. I’m just...disorganized. Can’t get my shit together in the morning, to bring my own lunch.”

“I usually do it the night before,” and there it is, she shouldn’t be giving him life tips, she’s still mad, right? She’s still mad at Bellamy. No advice for the boy who broke her heart, right?

Right?

Oh, for fuck’s sake, it’s time she admits to herself that she wants to forgive him. She’ll lie, she’ll lie to Octavia, to Raven, and yeah, probably to Murphy, though that’ll be a lot harder...but she should at least be honest with herself: when Bellamy put his arms around her, when he put his lips against her and swore he’d never leave again? Clarke’s heart whispered back that she wanted more than anything to forgive this man and tell him to stay. 

She shows him the notebook: “On July 1, 2013, you say that you called Jasper. Was that--was that a thing? You talked to Jasper a lot?” 

Bellamy eyes her. Then he looks carefully at his salad, fitting the lid across the top so it closes securely. “Maybe you should ask Jasper.”  
His face is hidden as he trashes the container.

She nods and crosses the hall again before he says another word. 

Clarke’s fingers tap out the angry message in a hurry: “were you in contact with Bellamy while he was gone?”

She throws the notebook in her desk a little more roughly than is probably necessary, without reading the rest of that day’s entry. 

Then a second, more upsetting thought occurs to her: “Did you know he was coming back here?! Because you acted shocked and Jasper, you should definitely help Maya direct the play this year if you were putting us on at the game that night.”

He texts back quickly: “Clarke, I couldn’t lie to you like that, had no idea he was coming back that day, thought he might’ve told me but he didn’t. And yeah, I texted him/talked to him sometimes while he was gone. And I never blocked him on Insta either so sometimes he would ask me about stuff on there. I kept your secrets, always.” 

There’s a pause, and the bell rings while Clarke is holding her phone in hands that betray her with tremors while three dots play in the corner of her screen. Finally the message pops up:

“Clarke, that night was an accident. And don’t lie to me, you think so too. I was never as mad as the rest of you, I couldn’t do it, that’s Bellamy Blake from kindergarten, you know? I saw him eating my banana Now & Laters every time I’d start to get pissed. So don’t--don’t don’t don’t--hold this against me or him, k?”

Madi’s the last student in and slams the door behind her as Clarke drops her phone into the drawer. She smiles, a questioning, fragile thing, on her way to her desk, and Clarke blinks back tears to smile back. 

Bellamy Blake from kindergarten, no, preschool, for her, who ate Jasper’s banana Now & Laters. 

She’ll never be able to forget that boy, will she? And, to take it a step further, who could? In high school she’d make him chew bubblegum before their kisses because she hated the saccharine banana taste of the candy he’d eaten at lunch. Before he could kiss her--they’d part ways, her headed for AP classes and him headed for his regular course work--before that goodbye, they’d split a piece of gum, spit it out, and kiss a lingering goodbye. 

Nothing, no kiss, no lips, since then have felt the same. 

“Uh, Ms. Griffin?” Madi asks, and the class titters. 

Clarke shakes her head: “sorry, guys. I’ll be back in two shakes.” 

She finds herself at his door, rapping a knock, like she’s a professional or some damn thing, and when she swings it open and asks, “Mr. Blake, in the hall?” as if she’s in charge of him, he tells his students, “page ten, JJ? Read down to the discussion questions, please, then break into your small groups.” 

Clarke’s on her toes with her hands around his jaw and her mouth on his, again, and oh, God, how they dance down the hall and against the lockers irresponsibly like nothing’s changed at all, and he steadies her with his hands over her ribs and breathlessly asks _what’s all this about_ and she doesn’t get a chance to tell him that it’s about the past and the present breaking over her head like a thunderstorm because Raven’s coming down the hall to steal the spraypaint again and she makes that noise, that noise Bellamy is so good at, all soft pain and heartbreak, and when Clarke’s head swivels Raven whispers, “no better than him, are you?” before she takes off in the opposite direction. 

It might as well be a cold shower, it might as well be a banana Now & Later, because Bellamy tastes all wrong in Clarke’s mouth now, and she covers her lips with her hand and slams into her classroom without another word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title: Devil's in the Details/Bright Eyes
> 
> Y'all, Clarke is literally a week into Bellamy Blake being in the classroom across from hers and she is falling the fuck apart.
> 
> It's a lot easier to hate someone when you don't have to look at them.
> 
> Bellamy's letters might not be up tonight, but I'm gonna try! I've been staying up way too late and my internal clock is so screwed up...
> 
> Love your comments more than yellowtail sushi.


	14. Well, I Lagged Behind (you got ahead)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy has big feelings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S SO LATE AT NIGHT AS I'M POSTING THIS AND FOR WHAT???

1/17/19

Princess, I fucking went back to AA. 

Niylah wouldn’t stop harping, she just wouldn’t. And Echo said, with a lot of attitude, “You were just doing so much better back then, Bellamy, you just were.”

And Lincoln sent me texts: “Hey babe,” (this was a joke between us, when I told him my middle name, he said I was so close to being BABE) “hey babe, miss your face around the meetings.”

So I finally, sullenly, dragged myself back tonight. 

(So sullenly, Princess. SO sullenly.)

After the meeting I broke up with Echo. I don’t think that’s what she was after, when she told me to go back. But I just--Princess I just could not do it anymore. 

I think it’s cause last week she woke me up from a nightmare, and I’m talking a full on nightmare, sweating, angry, tears down the face kinda nightmare, and we were sitting up in bed and she looked at my red, upset face and she said, “you called out for your Princess again.” 

Have you ever looked at someone’s face--and you knew that you were supposed to care about that person, knew you were supposed to love them, at least a little? And their face was hurt, their face was drawn, and they wanted to know shit like, “why are you calling out for someone else when you have nightmares?” 

Because that’s the person who came running when I called, Echo, that’s the person who woke up with me when I was scared, so many times, all the times, Princess, every time you slept at my house. 

When Echo wakes me up she looks mad. 

You only ever used to look scared, Princess, or very, very sad. 

I’m sad now, Princess, I’m scared, and I keep dreaming about my fucking dad chasing me up to my room while I try to haul Octavia over my shoulder, I dream about it all the time. 

I just wanna wake up to your breathless voice, Princess, to your concerned eyes with the tears in them. 

“You were calling out for your Princess again.”

Yeah, I fucking was, I always will.

Cause I’ve told you this before but I could always run to you, even in my dreams. 

2/4/19

Saw you on Jasper’s Insta again, lemme ask you this, Princess: does it make you laugh that you’re still marking up students’ papers with green pens?

It made me laugh, out loud in the coffee shop. I ping-pong around the coffee shops that are close to school, but I’m really fond of Epoch Coffee. Sitting inside with my papers spread across a table, glasses on my nose, coffee with fourteen sugars okay maybe not fourteen but probably fourteen-ish packets of sugar worth, I took a brain break and saw this pic of you, pile of papers on your desk, showing Jasper your green pen. He captioned it, “red pens are so aggressive, Jasper.” 

I burst out with a guffaw that startled the girl behind the counter and the dude sitting across from me. I said, “oh god, sorry, that was loud.” 

The dude gave me a quirked eyebrow that sort of...Princess, the thing is, I haven’t really been looking for anyone much at all, you know what I mean? Echo fell into my lap, I wasn’t like, out there looking for a pretty girl, right? 

This guy gave me an eyebrow and then he ran his eyes down my whole frame and…

Hey Princess, I think you might not be the only one who didn’t realize they were bi. Or like, something? Right? I guess when you go through your life only really having a heterosexual relationship at the center of it, you don’t realize that you could have other sorts of attractions. 

So I felt an attraction, today, Princess and it was...different. I liked it. It was good. 

It was a realization in more than one way. Cause all this time I had this weird--I had such a weird jealousy about you and Murphy. And it was such an intense jealousy, Princess, so much that it twisted my stomach and hurt my heart, and I never realized that maybe I was feeling jealousy that stretched in two directions, that crawled up two different dynamics and took over dual relationships. 

Princess, was I into Murphy? Was he into me? You never seemed jealous at all, when you saw us together, and you seem like you would have known.

You always knew shit, so didn’t you know? Or did you just not care? 

I can picture you not caring. I’m picturing a lot of shit, tonight.

I don’t know if you realize this, but I miss him, actually. Murphy used to have a smile for me. You know what I mean by having a smile? Like he’d dig it up from his guts, and it’d be just for me? He didn’t smile at many people, he really didn’t, mostly just us--me, and you, and Raven. 

He used to look at Jasper from under those heavily-lidded eyes, like he didn’t know what to do with poor Jas at all. But he’d fight for that kid, oh, he would, bloody knuckles and bloody noses and three day suspensions all day, all week, all month, all year, for that kid. 

Maybe Murphy did that more for you than Jasper, but all this time later, I’m still not sure. Murphy has a quiet heart, something that beats in the core of him. If it was for you, he wouldn’t say. But he’d expect you to know, I think he would. 

~~He was probably glad to get me out of the way, he probably wasted no time in crawling into your pants.~~

What a crass thing to say, Bellamy, it’s that same jealousy, and it’s shitty. I don’t wanna be that person. No, I mean, I really don’t, Princess. And I don’t have a right to it, all this time later.

Especially not when I keep seeing you with that pretty brunette. What’d I think, that you were going to stay faithful to me all this time? And what’s there to be faithful to? A boy who hurt you, who left you, who writes you letters and spies on you via Jasper’s Instagram? 

A guy who wants to come home to you, he really does, so he’s trying not to be an asshole, and he’s trying to get better.

And maybe, a guy who’s figuring out some shit about himself along the way.

Murphy was in love with you.

Was I in love with him?

Maybe you can be in love with more than one person at a time, Princess, but I was too young and dumb to know that at the time. 

Listen Princess, I think I have more to say about this, but it’s two in the morning. 

We’re gonna talk about Murphy again, though, in these letters and when I come home. Cause I know something’s there, but I didn’t know it until that guy raised his eyebrow at me today, and I need to think about it some more. 

3/1/19

Hey Clarke,

This has been the most brutal Winter. I had to turn the heater on, do you know how ridiculous that is in Austin? When I moved here everyone kept telling me it rarely drops below the mid fifties or sixties in the winter but it’s been so much colder than that, low forties, thirties, dropping below freezing at night. I know you’re laughing at me, it gets so much colder than this in Arkadia during the winter.

But Virginia’s a different story from Central Texas, for sure, when it comes to weather. 

Never thought I’d be so antsy for the heat of summer but I just fucking hate to be cold, Princess, you know that. 

I saw it snowed in Arkadia last week, Jasper had such a cranky post on Insta. He gets cold, he’s so skinny. 

You and Raven looked cute, though, in your puffy jackets, with your hats on.

I’m missing Raven these days, her acerbic tongue, her quick solutions. She’d get so obsessive over fixing up the Camaro, and it wasn’t even her car, she had that little crotchrocket and she kept getting pulled over for not wearing a helmet. Luckily her mom used to babysit that deputy who sits on the corner of 5th and Barn Road, so he’d always let her go. 

She has the best smile. I know I talk about y’all’s (y’all? I’ve been in Texas for way too long, I think) smiles but like, Princess do you ever think that someone’s smile says a lot about them? You, Princess, have about twenty five different smiles, but Raven and Murphy? You get what you pay for, with them, mostly one or two smiles, mostly the kind of smile you can trust. And Raven has the best, it sparkles, all white teeth and perfect lips. Sometimes I just wanted to kiss her.

Sometimes, before that fateful summer with the turquoise bikini, I did kiss her, but you already know that. Christ, she was beautiful, she still is beautiful, even now when I look at her in Jasper’s photos. Who’s she dating these days? I think my thirteen year old self is still pissed at Zeke Shaw, I really do. Hope she has better taste now, better than Shaw, better than me, better than Finn fucking Collins. Maybe I’m hoping too much. Living in Arkadia her choices are limited, I guess. Too bad Jasper’s gay. I’ve always thought they’d otherwise be totally perfect together, their intelligence could draw them together. But Raven’d step on her own grandmother to get to the top, and Jasper wouldn’t swat a fly. 

Listen Princess, these days I’m thinking about Octavia and starting to understand how you felt about Jasper, about protecting him. Octavia’s going to be in high school soon. Hope you’ll watch out for her ‘til I can get there, Princess, I think I’m kind of begging you. 

I’m cold, Clarke. Coffee’s not keeping me warm today. 

Gonna go to a meeting tonight, I think. 

Wish Jasper would find a reason to take a picture of Octavia on Insta. I feel like I only remember her as eight and all skinny legs and too much brown hair and bright, bright, bright blue eyes. Mom sent me a Christmas card and Octavia had braces and she was so tall and perfect french braids--hey, who took that picture of Mom and O? Was it you, Princess?

Miss her. Miss her. Miss them. 

Miss you, Christ, and wish you’d keep me warm. 

5/19/19

Hey, it’s your birthday, Princess, and you’re turning 24. 

Proud of you, teaching at AHS, turning kids on to art. 

Weird to be proud of you, when I’m still struggling through school and you’ve already been there for years. You’ve nearly hit two years teaching there, and I’m still at least a year out. 

I always get so nostalgic when it’s your birthday, always heartbroken. I went to a meeting last night, I’ve actually been to one every night so far this week, because I’m missing you, oh man, I’m missing you, and I’m missing Murphy (and I haven’t forgotten what I wrote about the other ~~day~~ month) and I’m missing my sister and I’m just missing everyone, and these stupid random tears fall, it’s ridiculous, Clarke, I hate it. 

You’ve left me behind, Princess, and I have to tell myself, as a reminder, that someday I’m gonna be there too. Cause I’m getting better, Princess, can’t you see I’m getting better? It’s been nearly six months and I haven’t had a drink. 

This woman spoke today; Her name’s Charmaine. She’s an interesting lady, she’s got a scar across her neck. I guess she’s been sober for years upon years, and she had such a calmness about her, like she knows shit. 

Just like you, Princess. 

Gonna talk to her if she comes tonight, or at least try to. She said she works at a high school. It’s nice to know another alcoholic is working with kids the way I want to, but she says she’s moving soon so I have a limited time to pick her brain. 

I’m joining you soon, Princess. I swear. 

Happy Birthday, I’ll see you soon. 

7/15/19

I haven’t stopped thinking about that Murphy thing, Princess, but I’m not more sure, really I’m just all tangled in my feelings. 

I grew up loving you and I knew that was okay. I mean, I felt other things first: I kissed Raven when I was twelve; I kissed her a lot, to be quite honest. But it was all smiles and temporary, nothing to keep, nothing real, nothing forever. 

But mostly it was just a stepping stone on my way to you, and mostly I glared at Murphy cause I knew he’d die for you, and my stomach hurt when I saw the way he looked at you cause oh God, Clarke, the way he looked at you, some days I don’t think about anything else.

Princess, I can’t stop thinking about the way he looked at me, now?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Gold Mine Gutted/Bright Eyes
> 
> It's nearly 4 in the morning so I don't have anything to say in the notes, but I love you. 
> 
> Your comments are better than salsa.


	15. Made a Life of Deception

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there are some missteps.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey bbs, just a reminder after the last four-ish chapters: Bellamy and Clarke's history took place when they were in high school, and younger. I don't know how old y'all are, I really don't, but as certified elder millennial I can assure you that I still, to this day, will remember things from when I was a nine year old and suddenly understand the situation as it was, crystal clear. Bellamy is figuring shit out, you with me? Shit that didn't make any sense at eighteen because eighteen is young, guys, it's so, so young. 
> 
> And as an aside, because someone felt like tracking me down to yell at me about this, yes, you can reach me on tumblr @ frecklesandfanfics, but I don't put up with a lot of bullshit, not online OR offline, so if you scream hysterically at me you'll just get blocked, k? (And, my darlings, I want you to know that if someone tracks YOU down to yell at you, you neither have to put up with it nor respond to it. You don't have to defend yourself and you don't owe them an explanation. Just block 'em and move on.)

Clarke can’t decide what the right thing is, when it comes to Raven.

An apology? No, that implies fault, and Clarke’s not ready to assume fault. 

An explanation. Clarke probably owes her some kind of explanation. 

But what kind, really? _I’ve been reading Bellamy’s letters and they’re heartwrenching and I’m pretty sure, no I’m actually sure, that I never stopped loving him, and I look at him in the damn classroom across from mine and I see that little boy who could be bribed with banana Now & Laters and I see that teenager who sat in Betsy trying to figure out the gear shift and now he’s this handsome man who still loves me, too, and Raven, why do I owe you an explanation for my heart still beating right in tandem with his--_

No, that won’t go over well at all.

And oh, oh, oh, Clarke knows Raven’ll tell Murphy but will Octavia find out? She won’t be able to stand the same look of betrayal from Octavia’s face, she just won’t.

So Clarke just texts Raven that they need to talk, gets the radio silence she was expecting, and spends the rest of her day feeling guilty and uncomfortable in her own skin. She stays late to avoid leaving at the same time as Bellamy and having to deal with his hurt face, too. Hurt hurt hurt, everyone around her, and Clarke’s starting to wonder if there’s an answer to “can I have Bellamy again?” that doesn’t include someone being broken-hearted. Give in to yes, and everyone around her will drown in their own pain, tell herself no, and Bellamy will go under in his own guilt and heartbreak.

_Stakes are high_ , Clarke thinks. _Stakes are sky fucking high_. 

Murphy’s propped up against her car when she finally leaves school around 5, and there’s a sigh deep in her lungs before she can even approach him. But she does face him, readjusting her huge bag on the way, squaring her shoulders. 

She wasn’t ready to do this with him yet, and when he puts his arms around her, pulls her close and kisses her cheek, she doesn’t trust it. 

“Let’s go get boba,” he suggests, and he’s so good at plying her, knows so well that she’d only turn down the iced tea and its squishy, chewy tapioca pearls if they were having a fight. 

Murphy is so deliberately casual and Clarke is so exhausted that she nearly forgets why they’re at Teapioca until he leans forward, suddenly intense, and says, “you know I love you, right?” 

Clarke nearly leans back to get away from his blue eyes, to get away from the feeling his declaration stirs up in her stomach, 20 years of memories, a fear and a longing and some kind of belief for the longest time that she could make something work with Murphy. 

Up until Bellamy came back, she still sometimes believed that, but Murphy and Raven have been sleeping together, and something a little bit more, for months. 

Clarke retreated from that, from them, in a hurry. They’re still her closest friends, but she wanted to give them a little bit of space to work out whatever was happening.

And whatever is happening is probably a lot more legitimate than Clarke and Murphy’s stop-start-stumble, stopped at age fourteen and begun again the night of her eighteenth birthday, always cloaked in sad and lonely feelings, missing Bellamy and lacking parental oversight and thinking that no one else loved them so they’d love each other. It was shaded by events like Murphy’s mom’s funeral and shared bloody knuckles protecting Jasper and Bellamy calling Clarke a bitch for at least half a year, and she felt broken down and fucked over and Murphy had never been anything else and they--yeah, they _did_ , a lot, for many years. They paused sometimes, for various boyfriends and girlfriends, but in the end found their way back in each other’s arms and beds so many times that Clarke thinks of Murphy before she thinks of Lexa, when she thinks of exes and oh-oh-oh-so-wrongs. 

But Raven and Murphy are adults who are consciously choosing each other over other people and Clarke respects that, she does, even if sometimes she’s jealous for reasons that don’t make any sense. 

She was never jealous of Bellamy, even though she didn’t miss the way Murphy would look at him, eyes half closed and biting his lip in the corner. There was something there and she always knew it, but it felt...interesting. It felt like something she, sixteen and not knowing enough, could explore someday. 

But Bellamy left, and they never got to explore any such thing, and now she won’t, because Murphy and Raven seem to make each other happy, and she’s not going to fuck with that, not now, not ever. 

“Yeah,” Clarke answers, “of course I do, and I love you, too.”

A smile plays in the corner of his lips again, so familiar, so exactly the look on his face she thinks of when she pictures him in her mind. 

“You have to know I talked to Raven,” now he shifts, uncomfortable with his role, with the character he’s decided to play. “She--Clarke, we, we’re worried with how you’re acting, so soon after he’s been back. Don’t you remember how he hurt you? And I don’t mean getting pushed down the stairs. And making out with him in the hall at school? While you’re lying to the rest of us about how you feel? I know you lie, Clarke, but not usually to me.”

_I know you lie_. And that’s the thing about Murphy, that’s the thing about their past. He knows she lies, God, he knows exactly what a liar she is, how she can keep her face composed and her smile perfect, etiquette 101, _smile while you’re lying_.

“ _The family appreciates your condolences_ ,” he said to her once, apropos of nothing, his face in the crook of her neck. “My father’s never been appreciative of a damn thing, and all I wanted was to go home. We didn’t appreciate shit.” 

And she, half-dressed and breathless, replied, “you think I didn’t know that?”

The hickey he gave her that night was physical evidence of the fact that he was thankful for her lies and fake smiles, even though it was nearly six years later. 

“Hey,” Murphy’s leaning closer, his hand applying just a little too much pressure. “Clarke, we need to talk about this.” 

And it’s this, the physicality of it, and Murphy leveraging their past for information, that starts to piss Clarke off.

“I don’t think we do,” she moves in her seat, pulling her knee away to cross her legs and lean away from him. “I just don’t really see how my relationship with Bellamy suddenly became a subject that needed to be up for group discussion.” 

“I dunno,” he challenges, “maybe ‘cause we had a front-row seat for all the different ways he hurt you and let you down? And Raven and I aren’t Jasper, are we? We’re not forgiving, we’re not kind, really. Bellamy used to say that you and I were tough, didn’t he? So I’m still mad, Clarke, why aren’t you?” 

“Because I’m still in love with him,” she cries, thankful that the shop’s music covers her declaration. “Because I’m still so fucking in love with him! When I look at him I’m seeing every version of him, Bel-mee from preschool to the guy who got too angry when he drank and I loved all those versions back then and I still love them now, damn it, and you cannot tell me I’m wrong, Murphy, because we both know what it’s like to love a person who’s broken and falling apart!”

Murphy draws back, fast as if she’d slapped him. “I never saw you that way,” he tells her quietly. “Clarke, I never, ever saw you that way.” 

“Well, that’s who I was. Am. So I have no right to look at Bellamy, who seems like he’s doing much better now, and judge him. None of us are the same people we were back then, Murphy, and maybe he deserves a little mercy for who he was at eighteen.”

“Why are you defending him?!” Murphy’s cheeks are pink, and he’s always looked like that when he’s been mad at her, since he was a little boy.

And that, she doesn’t know, really, not after that surge of guilt she felt when Raven caught them. Only, Bellamy needs defending. Bellamy needs Clarke, specifically, to defend him and to tell people things have changed in a lot of ways but not this one--she’ll still bloody her knuckles for the underdog, oh yes, she will, and Bellamy’s the underdog and she’s not guilty that Raven caught them, now, Clarke’s just mad. 

Clarke’s suddenly filled with the urge to break her fingers against Raven’s perfect white smile, and that cannot be healthy, that cannot be right. 

Murphy moves closer, catches her chin with his fingers. “What the hell is going on in your head today, Griffin?” 

Clarke shrugs like she might not be innocent, but she doesn’t give a shit. “I can’t hate him forever.”

Murphy’s face changes, quick as a Halloween mask, and he sneers at her, baring his incisors. “You didn’t have to watch him treat you the way he did, that last year. You didn’t--you didn’t see yourself at the bottom of the stairs, you didn’t have that heart-stopping moment of thinking that your friend, who you loved so desperately, was dead. And then, hey, Clarke? You didn’t spend the next eight years knowing that no matter what, no matter how hard and how much you wished that friend would take the paper houses you were building and turn them into brick? She kept lighting them on fire instead. So, Clarke, you might not be able to hate him forever, but I sure as hell can.”

He pushes away from the chair so fast and hard it flies out behind him, and as he stalks out of the door everyone turns. Clarke’s face burns as they look at her, all assumptions and judgment. 

She feels like putting her head in her hands and crying, but instead she waits five minutes for him to speed out of the parking lot, and then she follows, checking her watch to make sure Octavia’ll still be at volleyball practice, and she drives to the Blakes’ house on Cornelia Street.

Aurora had long brown hair for most of the time Clarke was a kid, and it’s been slowly but solidly turning gray since Bellamy left. Now her brown hair is so heavily streaked with silver that Clarke can barely remember what it looked like back then. She’s also thin, very thin, and there’s pain etched in the lines across her brow. 

She opens the door slowly, as if she’s eighty instead of barely approaching fifty, and Clarke’s nearly brought to tears when she thinks of how much life has robbed and will rob Aurora Blake. 

“Clarke!” she exclaims warmly, and reaches out for the younger woman. “You know, I was just thinking to myself today how I hoped that Bellamy’s return wouldn’t put a stop to our visits.” 

“Nothing on earth could put a stop to our visits,” Clarke tries to sound equally warm, full of intention, pleased to see Aurora. How could she not have seen, over the past six months, that Aurora was looking more worn? How could she, child of a doctor, have missed the signs of illness?

“Can I make you some tea?” Aurora asks, gingerly making her way into the kitchen, and Clarke slips a careful arm under Aurora’s elbow. 

“How about _I_ make _you_ some tea?” Clarke suggests, and Aurora sinks into a dining table chair gratefully. 

“I can tell by your face that Bellamy’s shared my bad news,” Aurora informs her, as Clarke opens the cupboard where the tea and cocoa have always been kept, since Clarke was at least nine, and probably before that, too. 

“Chamomile?” Clarke asks, adding, “he did, and I’m brokenhearted to hear it,” in the most level voice she can muster. 

“Chamomile sounds great,” Aurora only pauses for a second before launching into her speech. 

Clarke knows it’s a speech, like a capital-letter Speech that Aurora’s been saving just for Clarke. 

“Honey,” Aurora begins, and Clarke starts to cry as she turns on the electric kettle, fiercely brushing away tears with the back of her hand as she searches for the actual honey. “Honey, you’re not obligated to forgive Bellamy because he’s sober now, and I don’t want you to think I feel that way. But just like Octavia, I hope that you’ll have each other, when I’m gone. That’s something no one else understands, the bond you have with my son. And when I’m thinking of people who’ll be there for him when I die, you’re always the first person who comes to mind.”

_When I die_ , oh god, that hurts Clarke, that shatters her, and she finds herself sobbing at the kitchen counter as the kettle shrills in her direction. 

“Come here, please, so I can hold your hand while you cry,” Aurora begs, “please Clarke, I didn’t mean to upset you.” 

“No,” Clarke pulls herself together, or at least begins to, as she adds the water to their mugs and grabs the honey. “No, I, I’m sorry, Aurora. I...Murphy and Raven are upset with me, because I want nothing more than to forgive Bellamy.”

The stark relief on Aurora’s face is shocking, and Clarke grips her hand. “I would never let your family go through this alone,” she assures Aurora. “And if we get to the end and Octavia’s still mad at Bellamy, I’ll figure something out. I will.”

“Octavia’s young. She’ll find her way to her brother,” Aurora has made her mouth slightly prim, and Clarke knows the look, it’s the _Clarke and Bellamy are soulmates and I’ll never get in the way_ expression. 

Clarke can’t believe how young she was when she first saw that look on Aurora’s face. 

“I’m so relieved Bellamy’s already on his route to forgiveness, Clarke.” 

There are no Kleenex in the kitchen so Clarke blows her nose on a napkin. It’s in the same holder shaped like praying hands that it has been her entire life, and she thinks of saying grace over Hamburger Helper dinners, sitting between Bellamy and his mom, thinking of how ridiculous she found religion. 

Prayer seems a little less silly now, when she looks at the hollows under Aurora’s cheekbones, and considers that Bellamy’s only just gotten his mother back, and soon he’ll lose her again. 

Clarke’s glad she's forgiving Bellamy in a hurry, because he’ll need her. And no matter how angry, no matter how long, she could never deny him her support in his mother’s final days. 

“Mom?” Octavia calls, and the door slams behind her, “hey mom, we brought dinner!”

The screen creaks again and Clarke can imagine that Octavia let that door close right in Bellamy’s face. 

“I hope you brought enough for four,” Aurora tells her youngest, turning carefully for a kiss on the cheek.

“Of course we did, hey, Clarke,” Octavia’s stinky, that post-practice sweat all over her, and she’s pulling her hoodie over her head and saying she’s going to take a quick shower before Bellamy’s even made it into the kitchen. 

When he finally sees his mom with Clarke, still holding hands on top of the kitchen table where they ate a thousand dinners together, his eyes brighten and then dim in a flash. 

“Hey, Princess,” he places the takeout bags on the table, staring at them like they contain multitudes, “gonna eat with us? We’ve got enough General Tso’s chicken and MooShu Pork to feed an army.”

Aurora’s face says that yes, Clarke is eating dinner with them, so Clarke smiles at Bellamy and accepts his invitation, sliding out of her chair to help with the table settings.   
When she reaches for the plates he stands thigh-to-thigh with her: “You okay?” 

“No,” she whispers. “Not even a little, today.”

He places a kiss on top of her head, near her ponytail. “Me either. Can we be not okay together?”

She blinks back tears, clasps his hand for just a second, where he’s reaching for the silverware. “We can do anything together, Bellamy. Anything you want, if you’re staying.” 

“I keep telling you, Princess. I’m staying.” 

Clarke hazards a glance towards Aurora, who’s flipping open the takeout boxes. Bellamy tightens his hand around Clarke’s, still hiding it in the silverware drawer. “She’s not doing well,” he murmurs. “Clarke, they’re saying we’ll be lucky if she makes it to Valentine’s Day--” and his voice breaks a little, here. 

She looks up at him, the tears that she’s been trying to blink back spilling onto her cheeks and God, she refuses to be the one who cries about this, who makes this her personal tragedy. She slides her arm around his waist and draws him in, buries her face in his chest and drowns in his familiar scent. 

Their hugs feel just as good as their kisses, without that horrible trace of guilt Clarke’s been trying to hold down all day. 

“You still wear the same perfume,” Bellamy mumbles into her ear. “I wondered, you know. I wondered a hundred thousand times.”

“Chanel Chance,” she reminds him, and he laughs, low and rumbly. She’s not sure what the joke is. 

She can see Aurora watching them out of the corner of her eye, and the peace drawn across the woman’s features gives Clarke the strength she needs. 

Fuck Raven and Murphy.

Fuck the past, and their mistakes.

The thought of not being there for Bellamy when he needs her makes her sick, and she knows he doesn’t deserve it, that he wasn’t there when _she_ needed _him_ , but her dad always says that forgiveness isn’t about what people deserve--it’s about what they need. 

Bellamy might not deserve her, but he needs her. 

Clarke plans to be there, and she doesn’t care what anyone thinks, until she turns to see Octavia’s shocked face, and finds herself closing an empty hand over the space where the teenager once stood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Persona Non Grata/Bright Eyes
> 
> I told someone in comments once that my favorite dynamic is "lifelong friends who have some shit they need to discuss" and I'll take that a little further to say "lifelong friends who seriously need group therapy."
> 
> We've found out now that there was some Braven action when they were super young, now I've elaborated on Clurphy and no wonder Raven was so tetchy when Jasper and Clarke gave her a hard time--there's so much more to it than "that just happened" and um, Raven wanted to know if Clarke was kind and careful with Murphy. Kinda seems like she wasn't. 
> 
> I love Murven and I really liked that they'd be lifelong friends who ended up consciously choosing each other. We'll talk about that more, now that we know about his paper houses with Clarke. 
> 
> Bellamy's letters later tonight, and yeah, we're not done with Clarke-Murphy-Bellamy dynamics. 
> 
> Love your comments more than Slurpees, and hey, I love literally every single comment even the critical or questioning ones, as long as you keep them civil and use more than one (1) brain cell to analyze the story, which nearly every single one of you does and I love y'all for it.


	16. This is Gonna Be Reality (you can never dream it down)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bellamy writes sober, now...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Relationships are complicated and continue to be so.
> 
> I hope you can continue to be on board with my small town bullshit and the complex dynamics it led to, 'cause I'm only going to push it further, here. And I very much hope you can continue to understand that Bellamy was a seventeen year old boy at the time of his memories here. (And Murphy was, too! God he's such a provoking little shit.)
> 
> Christ, it honestly makes me want to weep when I think about how young that is. If any teenagers are reading this, I love y'all. You're honestly just really precious and I'm proud of you for being an adolescent during this insane time period we're currently living through, because it's not easy. If you're having a hard time, that's fucking valid, okay?
> 
> Hell if you're not a teenager and you're having a hard time, that's fucking valid, too.

7/28/19

Hey Princess, can’t stop thinking about my sister.

She’s the true innocent in this, you know? I love my mom, I love her, I swear, and I think she did the best thing she could figure out when she was way too young and having an asshole’s baby, but she let my dad be my dad. Can’t imagine you, as a mom, letting a guy slap your kid around every once in a while.

Whoa. I wanted to say that I couldn’t imagine you with a drunk. Fuck me, that’s not true at all, but I hope that Current Clarke wouldn’t put up with Past Clarke’s enabling of Past Bellamy, who was being a total asshole and did NOT deserve Past Clarke. I hope that you--everything I want to say sounds so fucking victim-blaming, and it’s difficult, honestly, to express that I just want better for you now, Clarke, I want to both be better and give you something better when I see you again, and I want you to be the kind of better who accepts something better?

Hell, Clarke, even if it’s not my brand of better. I just want you to be happy. But there’s still something a little off when I see Jasper’s Instas of date night with you and the brunette. 

(Yeah, I know her name’s Alexandra, but I just think of her as “the brunette” and it keeps me from losing my mind a little bit, because “the brunette” is just someone in a line of someones who don’t matter at all, Clarke, and that’s what I want her to be. Unfairly, I think.)

Maybe no one else would notice the way your mouth is lopsided, the way your eyes don’t crinkle the way they always used to. 

Maybe I’m projecting. 

But anyway. Octavia. It’s not her fault that I’m an asshole drunkard, just like my dad. And now she’s had to grow up without me, and it’s been six and a half fucking years, Princess. Were you there? If you’re the person you are in my memory, I think you were. I finally broke down and asked my mom and she said, _why don’t you email her, Bellamy, why don’t you text her, why don’t you call her phone--her number is still the same, Honey. And she’ll tell you, I know she will_. 

Will you, though, when I ask?

I guess if you’re still Clarke Griffin I’ll probably be able to figure out the answer to both whether or not you’ll tell me a damn thing, as well as whether or not you’ve been looking out for Octavia, within about an hour of arriving back in town. 

I used to call you Atlas, holding up the heavens. If you’re holding up my sister, you’re still doing the same thing.

I believe in you, Princess, you’d never punish Octavia for my missteps. She’ll be a freshman next month. 

Even if you’re still mad at me, please, please, please make sure she does her homework.

Make sure she joins an extracurricular. 

Make sure she’s not getting trapped in problematic high school relationships.

Make sure she doesn’t end up like my mom, okay? And that’s so mean and disloyal, but Clarke, you know the truth, so please, okay? Just...please, Atlas, take on one more star. 

8/1/19

Princess, I sat down with Charmaine today. She brought her daughter, Hope, and wow, she reminded me of Octavia at that age (six maybe?), such a troublemaker. As you used to say, a real sassafras. 

She’s got a plush gig coming up at a high school in Polis (yeah, sarcasm, how can you tell?) and I was sort of shocked to realize she was headed back towards you. She said she grew up in the area, she still has friends there, and she’s really excited to go back, all shiny and new.

I felt like she was telling my story. I let her know I was from Arkadia with shaking hands, I really did. I thought she was going to ask why I left and I didn’t want to lie to her, I’m not that guy anymore, who lies. 

She stared in my face for a long minute, and I think she realized that I wasn’t ready to share my whole damn life with her, so she directed the conversation back towards teaching. 

She also told me about all the things that led her towards trying to get sober and AA, and Clarke, I never realized that other people could’ve screwed up more than me because of alcohol. Not that I’m letting myself off the hook--I’ll never let myself off the hook, you could look in my face and say you love me and you never blamed me for a single second, and I still wouldn’t--but I guess I never really thought about addiction before this. Lincoln’s told me some stuff, and now Charmaine, and I think about my dad, too, and it’s like people have entire horrible, sad, fucked up stories that I just never would have considered when I was sixteen. I’d just have turned my back and called them names, not had any sympathy, no mercy, you know? 

You were tough, Princess, but you always had mercy. 

And you were always quick to offer it. 

I loved that about you. 

9/3/19

Mom sent me a first-day-of-school snap of Octavia and...do all the girls wear so much eyeliner, now, Princess? You never did. You never needed to, though. Your eyes are their own kinda magic. 

I know what you’ll say. I know what I would say if someone else asked me that. Something something policing women’s choices, something something patriarchy. But...she’s my little sister. 

It’s kind of hilarious to think of the wrong kind of guy approaching her when Ms. Griffin is on the case, all advice and advanced warning. 

I know you’re telling my sister how to ward off the creepers. At least there’s that when I feel so defensive of her I want to quit school. (in my last semester! Prof keeps asking why I don’t want to walk in the Spring. Fuck that, Princess, I’m going to take the first job I can get, and who cares about walking when there’s no one to watch?)

(I worked hard to blow out of here this one semester early. Wish I’d been like you were in college, all GSA and dorm parties, though I did make it to a couple at UT.)

Hey Princess, I’m kinda into that Ms. Frizzle vibe you rock at school. Saw you on Jasper’s Insta today, you and Raven--she was wearing coveralls, though, and wielding a fucking torch--and your dress had cats all over it. 

Are you gonna be dressed like that when I see you again? God, I hope so, cause it’s fucking cute. 

10/12/19

Princess, Prof smacked a copy of our story on my table today. 

I could barely fit this class in--but he insisted--and I swear we covered the material in the first advanced writing class he made me take--but today class had barely started and he had this self-satisfied smile on his face and he said that congratulations were in order because he shopped my book--Princess my book, my book, mine? And he threw it on the table til it skidded to me with a cool cover like a tumblr fucking photoset, and I’d called it _The Chosen_ because that’s how it felt for so long, like I chose you and you chose me and we were special and, you know, one in a million, like my mom used to say. 

He said they were interested in publishing it as a coming-of-age anthology, and they mocked one up for Prof and for me. They used all my best stories, Day Trip, Nevermore, DNR, Sleeping Giants...a bunch, Clarke, a whole handful of love letters to who we were before we were this. 

I think my heart stopped beating for just a second, I honestly do. 

I want to teach history, Princess. I’m a history nerd, you know how much I love all that old Roman stuff, and I think if you personally could have chosen a career for me, this’d be it. (That’s something to unpack later, actually, hmm.) But I do love to write, I do, and these stories are the best things I’ve ever written, polished to diamond-shiny, and I’m proud of them. They’re poignant, I know that, sometimes I cry so much when I write them that I’m wrung out afterwards. 

To think that something I wrote, several somethings, could be published and read and bought and--

A book that does well could be worth a lot, could be worth me being able to wait for a job instead of taking the first one, could be worth me going home without waiting for an opening at AHS, could be worth a college fund for Octavia, and Clarke I think I froze a little, with all those potentialities right in front of my eyes. 

But there’s one thing I actually know, in my heart: If you read our entire childhood stripped bare for parts, you’d be hurt. So hurt. 

Prof asked if I’d be willing to call up my Eliza, now. 

My heart was thumping in my chest, my hands shaking, cause they still shake, Princess, they still shake just like all those times you covered them with yours. 

I told him no, Princess, cause I couldn’t ask your permission. 

He tried to take the book back, but I gave him a hell no and put it in my bag. 

I wrote those stories about us, and they belong to us. I’m gonna show them to you, sometime. 

Until then they’ll live next to the Iliad and this book about forgiveness that I’m pretty sure I’ll never read, cause all these years later, Princess? I’m still not convinced I deserve it. 

(Prof’s convinced I’m gonna change my mind. I might drop his class. I’m kinda pissed at him, I don’t need the credit, and I don’t suppose he understands my writing at all if he thinks I’m just gonna call up “my Eliza” out of the blue. Those stories? They’re a tragedy, cause Eliza’s gone now. And I’m still not sure if she’s ever coming back.)

10/31/19

Niylah says this is my last semester as a true-blue college student and she doesn’t care what I say, we’re having a party tonight. 

Me: No one’s coming to our damn party if there’s no liquor, Niy.

Her: Lincoln will. 

And he did, with some friends who’re also sober, including Nyko who looks like a fucking Viking, and Clarke, why are all the people I know who are sober so deeply intimidating? I’m just this too-skinny smalltown kid and they’re straight up scary. Even Charmaine--did I mention that scar on her throat? And her low voice and intense way of talking? In fact, she's maybe the scariest of all of them, I can't imagine what her students will think of her. 

No one ever questions their life choices these days, I’m sure. 

So we played games and had another charcuterie board and didn’t drink at all and it was good.

After everyone left Lincoln said I needed to start thinking about “working the steps” and I printed them out and drew a line through all the God stuff. 

Then I checked off the ones I’ve already done, like admitting that I’m an alcoholic, or admitting to someone else the things I’d done wrong--cause I’ve told Lincoln literally everything, even the worst stuff, even the stuff that stuck in my throat when I tried to bring it up. 

And hey, Princess? I have to make a list of all the people I’ve hurt. 

The shorter list will be who I haven’t. 

11/15/19

Hey Princess, my mom sounds really tired these days. Do you notice that, when you see her? She seems desperate to have me talk to Octavia lately but no matter how many times I call or what I text her, O isn’t interested in having a conversation. 

I think it’s probably awful enough for you, but for people who had to watch the whole trainwreck they’re mad for themselves, _and_ they’re mad for you. 

O’s probably mad for my mom, but is she mad for you? Did you tell her? You wouldn’t have. 

Protect Octavia, that’s what we always said, and you wouldn’t go back on that now. 

I’m nowhere near ready to come home but I’m worried, okay? I’m worried, and I might come home early, Princess. I hope you forgive me just the same if I do. 

12/1/19

You know that summer before senior year? When we’d decided this was going to be our last lazy summer? Every hot day stretched into the next. Things bled into each other, we’d stay up all night at my place and then still get up and go to the pool for hours (don’t forget the sunscreen, Raven would snark, Clarke’ll burn to a crisp. But I like your skin, Princess, you’ve always been all ivory and golden curls, and for all of Raven’s snark she wanted someone to look at her the way I was looking at you.) Everything had a smile attached to it, even when we were hot and cranky and we’d walk back to Raven’s and camp out in her air conditioned bedroom until her mom shooed us home. 

We’d all just walk to my place, use our pocket money at the corner store for chips and candy and soda on the way home, and hide until the temperature dropped below 105 again. 

Cause I’ve been thinking about what I’ve loosely titled as The Murphy Thing (for a writer, that’s a pretty shit name, huh?) and I keep going back to that summer, hiding in my bedroom. Raven’s staked her claim on the bed, laying on her stomach with her legs kicking in the air, with Jasper irritated and cross-legged behind her, and she’s staring at her phone. We’re taking a quiz of some sort, I’m sure, she always had these damn quizzes: Are you a lemon or an orange? Answer these 72 questions to find out! And my room’s not very big, so I’ve got my back against the bed and Murphy’s got his against the window, and your head’s in my lap but your legs are in his. 

He had his wrist over your shins, I remember that, and his thumb absently tapping against your calf while he stared at his own phone. You shifted, sleepy with the heat, cheeks flushed, and he moved your legs so your ankles weren’t digging into his thighs and then he just--kept his hand wrapped around your calf, and his thumb moving back and forth.

Absently stroking your leg, like his hand belonged there, like he belonged there. 

Like he fucking owned you, Princess, and I could have killed him, jumped the distance between us and broken his nose, but he looked up at me from under his lids and he gave me this smirk and a wink and the whole floor dropped out from under me. 

You looked up at me with a grin, like you knew shit--why did you always know shit? And you lifted your chin, right at the curve where my hand was sitting, and you ghosted your fingers up my throat and rubbed your thumb across my lips and said, don’t frown like that, Bellamy, not when I like your smile so much. 

Princess, did I want him less, and the both of you together more?

I don’t have a clue, I really don’t, and when I come back to town I’m coming for you, for Octavia, for my mom, not this crazy adolescent dynamic that I might have wanted and don’t know--

Christ, Princess, I don’t know what I wanted. I was seventeen years old. But I loved him in some kind of way, I did, intensely, for years, and I do know that. I can admit it now. 

I think Murphy’s always acknowledged something about you that scared me to death: you’re not a woman I could own, no matter how much I wanted to control you in those last desperate days. 

He knew you were a wild thing, and you probably liked that very much, and you probably wished your dumbass boyfriend would figure it out, too. And I did, eventually, not even so long after our last, lazy summer, figure that out. 

You used to say that we belonged to each other. 

I don’t think we were talking about the same kind of ownership. Hey listen, Princess, will you tell me someday if it rankled every time I called you My Princess? Or was that okay? Did you like it? 

I don’t know anymore about a lot of things when it comes to our relationship. That’s why I like to write about things I know I got right, or the things that came before I kissed you in the lake. 

I saw the same guy at Epoch, and I thought about asking him out. Couldn’t quite find the guts. But he fell into the seat across from mine and I--I liked him. 

Clarke, I liked him. 

And we’re gonna talk about that one day, too.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Devil's In the Details/Bright Eyes (Have I convinced anyone to check out Bright Eyes yet? No?)
> 
> Man, I literally could not with Bellamy when I was writing this chapter. First of all, totally heartbreaking that he didn't take the book deal because he was scared of hurting Clarke. Prof sucks for taking liberties, he really does. 
> 
> Their last, lazy summer? Can't wait to write more stories from that time period, really! But Murphy's familiarity with Clarke and then her way of soothing Bellamy when she saw that he was jealous? Oof. As Bellamy says, "there's a lot to unpack there."
> 
> Listen, I hate taking to the comments to defend my Bellamy but I also don't want to presumptuously decide that y'all don't understand what I'm doing with him, so I'm gonna let this one fly into the ole "add chapter" and hope you get it? 
> 
> Let me know if you don't.
> 
> I love your comments more than Heath Bars.


	17. Put the Past in the Ground

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, we're still at The Blake House.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for hanging in there an extra day! I took a mental health day from like, my whole life, and then fell asleep crazy early.
> 
> I'm a whole train wreck of a person, y'all, you just don't even know.

The week Bellamy crashed his Camaro, Clarke had convinced herself she was going to break up with him. 

She knew it was the right decision; he was drinking himself blitzed every chance he could, saying ugly things, and he’d looked her in the eyes the night before when she said, ‘Why do you call me that all the time now?” and answered, “you mean a bitch? Because you are one.” 

Clarke didn’t know a lot about healthy relationship dynamics, but she was pretty sure that when Bellamy could stare straight into her soul while calling her a bitch, things were broken in an inescapable, unfixable way. 

She’d go to prom by her own damn self, who cared if it was two weeks away? She couldn’t stand the way he was hurting her anymore, it felt like she couldn’t breathe when he called her names, when he lashed out. She wanted to talk to Murphy about it but already knew how he felt: “break up with him, he’s acting like a complete dick.” Jasper had advised her to do whatever she felt best, but yeah, things were off and Jasper’d been worried. Raven said, “I can’t believe you didn’t dump him over Christmas. Things’ve been wrong for a while.”

Clarke figured she’d take their collective advice. She was working on a bullet-pointed list for her conversation with Bellamy, and trying to figure out the best time to catch him when he couldn’t possibly be drunk. (After school, right after, before he got in his car. He wouldn’t be the first guy to be dumped in the AHS parking lot, and he wouldn’t be the last.)

Instead her cop father called her phone in the wee hours of the morning one Saturday, practically hyperventilating: “You’re not with Bellamy, right?” 

Turned out he had every cop in town watching Bellamy’s Camaro with the knowledge that a fellow policeman’s daughter frequented said car. And that was why, within ten minutes of the police pulling up to Bellamy’s accident, Clarke knew that he’d been a hairsbreadth from dying. 

This close to losing Bel-mee from preschool, and Clarke felt it was a reprieve. 

Bellamy swore he was going to stop drinking, when she came to the accident scene and grabbed his shaking hands, pulled him close and he buried his lips in her hair. They stared at the crumpled car together, breathing fast. Clarke felt nearly like she’d been in the passenger’s seat, scenes from their childhood playing across a screen inside her eyelids, every good second from their relationship, all of it, so fast, and her throat closed up and she barely heard the promise but she thought, really thought, he’d learned his lesson.

He lasted three days. 

She never got around to breaking up with him--they’d barely recovered from the emotional whiplash of that night when she fell down the stairs--but when she’s sitting with her back to Octavia’s door, trying to figure out how to get an angry adolescent to acknowledge her, she can’t stop thinking about the way her heart was beating in her throat when she even thought she’d lost Bellamy, all those years ago, how all in a moment she realized that no matter how mean he was for one year, there were thirteen years leading up to that, and she couldn’t stop telling herself that he’d be the Bellamy from those thirteen years again. 

She still needed _that_ Bellamy. 

Bellamy and Octavia are staring down the certainty of losing their mother, and Clarke doesn’t know how to force Octavia to see she’ll need _this_ Bellamy.

“Octavia?” Clarke lets her knees fall together, straightens her legs because they’re falling asleep. She tries again: “I know you’re mad, Sweetie, but we need to talk about this like adults.”

Octavia pulls the door open with violent force, sending Clarke spilling into the empty space of her bedroom floor. “Who’s the adult here, Clarke? You, getting back together with your problematic high school boyfriend? Or me, who you treated like a fucking child by not being honest with me when I saw you at school?”

Clarke’s lips move but Octavia threatens, “if you say language, I fucking swear to God, Clarke Griffin, I’ll never speak to you again!” 

Clarke has years of experience with the unique struggle of not laughing at a teenager while they struggle their way through processing big emotions, but she still nearly breaks as Octavia looms large over her, pissed about an admonition Clarke hasn’t made--and wasn’t planning on making. 

“Octavia,” and she pulls the girls’ hands to bring her to Clarke’s level. “Sit, okay? We’ll both be the adults for a second.” 

Clarke knows Bellamy’s on the stairs, listening, so she starts small: “I’ve barely had a second to myself since I decided to try to forgive Bellamy, and the only time I saw you today you were berating me about Jason, so it’s unfair for you to claim that I’ve been lying to you.” 

Clarke learned how to talk to teenagers slowly, but she’s got a style down now: Empathy, understanding, a dash of self-deprecating humor, honesty--and no treating the teen like they’re a little kid. 

Tell your truth, and don’t let the teen minimize your truth within the context of their own emotions.

Being aware of her own faults has gotten Clarke so much further than she ever imagined back when she pretended like she knew everything.

You know, when she was Octavia’s age. 

So: Don’t talk to the teen like a child. Don’t let the teen minimize your truth.

Clarke makes her voice level and calm:

“I think it’s important that I defend myself against your accusation of getting back together with my problematic high school boyfriend.” Clarke tucks a stray curl behind her ear. “It’s extremely reductive to quantify your brother as my ex-boyfriend. Your brother and I were friends our entire lives. We knew each other in preschool, we knew each other before we could say each other’s names correctly. We were very close. And we had a solid romantic relationship, for a pair of high schoolers, for a couple of years before Bellamy started drinking. We each knew the other person’s flaws, and tried to work around them or help them improve, okay?” 

Octavia’s rolling her eyes. “I don’t need to be told how to have a good relationship.” 

“And I’m not trying to tell you how to have a good relationship. But listen, okay? There’s no high school couple out there who are mature enough to process some of the things we were dealing with. And I--I had my own way of trying to go forward, but Bellamy started drinking.”

“I know. My dad was an asshole.” And she looks bored, now. “But all kinds of people have assholes for parents, and they don’t become douchebags who push their girlfriends down the stairs.” 

“It was an accident, O!” Clarke exclaims sharply. “It was a fucking stupid, fucking awful, fucking drunken accident. I’m not going to let the rest of my life be dictated by something that happened when Bellamy and I were kids and more so, I’m not going to let _your_ life be dictated by that accident. It’s time to move on. I’m moving on. Your brother is back and he loves you and your mom is…” Clarke squeezes Octavia’s hand. “I want to be there for you, and Bellamy wants to be there for you. So as this goes on--let us.” 

Octavia’s mouth is turned down and Clarke leans forward, eyes darting to the staircase and back. “Octavia, you don’t know about your dad, okay? You don’t know anything. So can you just--not be so superior about shit that happened when you were practically a fetus?”

“I remember--” Octavia whispers fiercely, “I remember that day, Clarke, I remember running up the stairs and Bellamy’s bloody nose and I fucking remember that my dad didn’t ever come back! And then! Clarke! Not even an entire year later! Bellamy left and he didn’t come back! And now my mom--Clarke, you cannot lose yourself in Bellamy, you cannot forgive him and let him hurt you again, because I need you with _me_ , don’t you get that?!”

Clarke yanks Octavia forward by her wrists, wraps her hand around the younger girl’s tearful chin. “You say that I try to get too much mileage out of the story that I chose your name, Octavia, but don’t you understand what I’m telling you every time I say that? I have known you since you were born, Octavia Blake, and I have never, ever left you behind.” Clarke hugs Octavia’s skinny frame, “I love you every bit as much as I love your brother. I want to support both of you.” 

Clarke feels it, she feels the moment Octavia softens, but then Bellamy clears his throat on the stairs and Octavia stiffens all over again. “Forgive him if you want,” she hisses, close to Clarke’s face, “But I’m not a fucking soft touch like you.”

“Maybe if you’d known him before that day you say you remember so well, you’d feel a lot more _softly_. You’re not a child, Octavia, and I won’t treat you like one. You’re being hard on Bellamy because you felt abandoned. But he’s here, Octavia, for you, so why don’t you cut him a break?”

Octavia stares at Clarke for a long moment without blinking. “You’re fooling yourself if you think Bellamy’s here for anyone besides you,” she says finally, “get out of my room.”

It could have gone worse, Clarke thinks, flashing on Murphy’s bared teeth, his allusion to their paper houses.

_I never saw you that way,_ he’d promised. 

_Never saw me as broken and falling apart?_

_I’m not the only one fooling themselves around here._

In fact, Clarke sometimes thinks that half the reason Murphy loved her was the fact that she was broken and falling apart.

Bellamy’s halfway down the stairs with his head in his hands and Clarke smooths her skirt under her to sit next to him. She can feel misery radiating off of his frame like warmth. They sit quietly for a few minutes, his shoulder solid next to hers. 

They sat on these stairs a hundred times over the years, waiting for punishments to be doled out and cooling off from fights. Aurora was fond of the "I'm so disappointed in you," speech, and Clarke used to roll her eyes at Bellamy, their thighs stuck to the wood, while they gave her a moment to calm down enough to give that speech.

Aurora loved a good Speech with a capital S. Still does, if tonight's been any indication.

“I think I’ve lost her,” Bellamy mumbles finally, without lifting his head. 

“Oh, she’ll come around, Clarke assures him, putting her chin on his shoulder. “She’ll see how special you are--how special second chances are.”

He shakes his head miserably, and she tries again. “Bellamy, when you left, eight years ago? That’s when you lost her. Now you can get her back.”

“You’re so--” he breaks off, pulling at his own hair.

Clarke draws back: “What?” 

“You’re being damn supportive and sanguine, Princess. I’m not sure it suits.”

Clarke’s offended.

“I’m not sanguine, Bellamy, I’m--I still have a lot to work through. I’ve just missed you. And Octavia has, too. And when she realizes it, she’ll come to you. But she’s--she’s really young. Don’t you remember what it was like to be that young? To see so much in black and white? We’re gray now, me and you.”

“Speak for yourself,” a trace of teasing creeps into Bellamy’s voice. “My hair is still lush and brown.”

“I think you can see that I’m maintaining my flawless skin and perfect curls,” Clarke preens slightly, even though Bellamy’s still glaring at his own feet. 

“She’s not entirely wrong,” he says softly, only for her ears. “For a long time I thought the only reason I wanted to come back here was for you.” 

That’s a lot, for Clarke, a weight, a fear. “And now?” She tries not to sound as suddenly panicked as she feels. Bellamy coming back for her seemed like a romantic notion until he said it out loud, now it seems overly grand, absurd, ridiculous. 

“I came here to make things right with you, Clarke, I did. And Octavia, she was always sort of--nebulous? She was little, in my memory. I have twice as much history with you as I did with her. And my mom? Fuck me, Princess. I was furious with her, for ages. But when Octavia went into her freshman year--I started to feel like I needed to be here for her. Wanted to be here for her. Then my mom told me she was sick and I--I needed to come back, support my sister, spend what time I could with my mom…”

Clarke’s knuckles go white on his knee. 

“I keep wishing I’d come back earlier, when I finished school, back in 2019. But I took a job in Austin.”

Now Clarke’s head swivels. “You were in Austin?”

“Haven’t made it too far in my letters, huh?”

“No, I--Diyoza was in Austin, she lived there for years upon years. She has this ex-husband--”

“Yeah, I...I know, Clarke. I met her at AA. I thought she still lived in Polis, figured it was close enough, got in touch with her and asked her if the school was hiring. I didn’t know she was here, but she offered me the job right away--”

“Yeah, Mrs. Cartwig had to go on bed rest when we thought she’d be here all semester, Bellamy, you have been leading a charmed existence, to have met her, to have decided to come back when you did, to get this job which, I’m so proud of you for going back to school, but you are absolutely not qualified for.”

“I feel less than charmed at the moment,” he tells her sadly. “I didn’t expect a warm welcome, I didn’t, but I don’t think I prepared myself properly.”

Clarke tries for a smile, but it comes out sad. She touches his cheek. “It’s not going to be this way forever.” 

“You’re tough, Princess. How do you do it?” 

“A lot of fake smiles,” she replies lightly, but Bellamy doesn’t miss the grief under her voice. More seriously, she adds, “Murphy missed you too much. He’s not going to break easily. You should go for Raven.”

She doesn’t understand what’s in Bellamy’s tone when he repeats very softly, “Murphy. Yeah, I missed him, too.” He shakes his head quickly, circles back to the problem: “Raven, though? Do you really think so?” 

“Yeah, I kinda do.” Clarke bites her lip, remembers Young-Raven and Young-Bellamy, dark heads bent together over the Camaro, racing their dirtbikes and yelling competition while Clarke pokes Murphy’s shoulder and argues with Jasper about stupid Game of Thrones or whatever they were watching at the time. 

(When Clarke and Murphy are together, they watch utter trash, Bravo reality shows and MTV bullshit. When Clarke and Raven are together, they watch shows with half-naked men and talk about the hottest boys in school with a frank, refreshing level of filth. Bellamy always picks the damn History Channel and Clarke would protest except she lays with her head in his lap and he plays with her hair.)

Clarke remembers when Bellamy tried to keep a secret from her for the first time, the week after he and Raven let a game of “Dare Ya” go too far and had ended up sharing their earliest, most awkward kisses. To this day Clarke’s not quite sure why he didn’t tell her--she hadn’t completely realized her feelings for him, and she’s sure when she looks back that she hadn’t changed her behavior at all. They hadn’t started flirting yet. They were just--close. Closer than close. Best friends.

So, you see, when Bellamy started acting distant, Clarke was hurt. Very, very hurt. She internalized that hurt until she lashed out and demanded to know what, exactly, was wrong with him?!

His whole face went red under his freckles and he rubbed the back of his neck, stammering aggressively at her that he didn’t know what she was talking about and they chased each other around his backyard with their voices raising steadily until she was angrily driving her finger into his chest and his lips were twisted and his chest heaved and he yelled, “I kissed Raven and I feel--” 

Clarke stepped back from him, and burst into laughter. He didn’t finish saying how he felt, and now that she’s an adult she knows how he felt, exactly: horny and confused and guilty without knowing exactly why.

Poor Bellamy, really, not sure why Clarke was mad and then her sudden, abrupt giggles. “Kiss Raven all you want,” she’d snorted, “just don’t be a jerk to me afterwards.” 

Their kissing phase was short but plentiful, and paved the way toward a closeness between Bellamy and Raven that was more beautiful and brutal than anything they’d had before. Raven would say anything: that his feet stank, that he blew it at the football game, that his parents were fucked up and he should never, ever breed.

Probably that last one was over the line, but Bellamy shrugged and let it roll off his shoulders: “You’re probably right,” but his eyes went to Clarke, assessing, wondering. 

In most of Clarke’s best memories Raven and Bellamy are shoulder-to-shoulder, golden tan and laughing, white teeth flashing and Clarke knows, she knows knows knows, that Raven’ll forgive Bellamy. 

“You need a project,” she offers, finally. Clarke can Diyoza this shit, absolutely she can. “Maya’s gonna be asking for us to help with all the props and set pieces for Spring Musical--you should do it, too. Raven always complains that she doesn’t have enough assistance and you’re trying to suck up to Diyoza, so you might as well just…”

“Show her the Camaro and hope for the best?” Bellamy laughs, but it’s a little hollow. 

“We’re doing Grease this year, you’re not far off.” 

“Oh, God, I thought Grease got cancelled…” he groans a little, “besides, didn’t we just DO the fifties at Homecoming?” 

“Babe, you do not get to complain about Spring Musical until you’ve done four of them. Like I don’t want to hear a fucking word, even when you’re suspended from the rafters painting trees and Raven’s got a chainsaw--”

“Raven might have a chainsaw? I don’t know if this is a great idea, Princess, I really don’t.”

“I mean, last year she brought her fucking welding torch and Jasper made these bombs that the kids threw in the second act--it was really amazing, actually. Really amazing.”

“You’re complaining, but I think you like it, Princess.”

“I like everything about school, generally speaking.”

“Some things never change,” and now he drops a kiss on her temple. 

When she looks over at him, brooding on the staircase with the weight of the world on his shoulders, Clarke hopes that some things _will_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: Devil's in the Details/Bright Eyes (yes I will mine this entire damn song for chapter titles, thank you for asking)
> 
> It's definitely three in the morning. But! Braven dynamics! Clarke's got a plan to make Raven remember the good times! Clarke scolded her a little bit, but Octavia definitely got the last word. 
> 
> Live for your validation and love your comments more than cheesecake.


	18. Now I Lie When I Talk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Letters!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, guys, I'm not on medical leave anymore and I absolutely don't have enough time for two chapters a day! So I'll be eking them out a little more slowly now but hang in there! I'll still be going back and forth between Clarke and Bellamy. 
> 
> I'll be doing my best and I appreciate you!

12/21/19

Hey Princess, some fucking stroke of luck, I got offered a job here. 

I was waffling on staying but I have a great roommate, some great friends, and now a job for sure. 

And I--I wanted to be, but I’m not ready to come home. I wanted to be, but I’m just not. 

I will be soon, I hope. 

We’ll see. 

12/25/19

Yeah so, I still hate Christmas, but I went to Niylah’s dad’s this year. I felt fake, like I was trying so hard not to be a bummer that I put on this fake bonhomie. It was awful. But I did not, absolutely did not, fucking drink. 

I was thinking about that fancy Christmas party your mom had. Maybe junior year? Yeah, it was junior year, ‘cause my dad was still home. He made fun of my tux, but you said I looked debonair.

Your dress was emerald green silk, cap sleeves, so much cleavage. The skirt was a little long, below your knees, but it swung when you moved. Your hair was pinned up. You looked so gorgeous, Clarke, and I don’t know if I told you.

I probably told you. I was still telling you things, back then. 

You’d tried to convince your mom to let you invite the whole gang, but she wasn’t interested, made excuses about the catering and whether or not there was enough room in the ballroom. But she was requiring you to be there, and you got a plus one. I teased you for a week: “don’t you want to take Raven?” and then I tested you: “Murphy says he looks great in a tux, and you’ll probably have more fun with him.” 

Both got me rolled eyes and an offer to pay for my tux. Which you did. Thanks for that, Princess. 

If you were smart you probably should have taken Jasper, actually. He was always a great dancer and I felt like an idiot while you stepped lightly around me. But when you put your arms around my neck and pressed your stomach against mine for the slow songs, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. 

You said, “you’re an idiot if you think I want to be here with anyone else,” and you smiled up into my face like you’d love me forever and listen, Princess? 

That kind of smile could break a man. 

But that kind of smile could make him whole, too. 

1/23/20

I hate kids. Oh my god, Princess, I hate kids. Why did I think I could make this a career? Teenagers are rabid beasts. They smell. Why don’t their parents give them deodorant, and who the hell told them that Axe Body Spray or Tommy Hilfiger cologne would solve their problems? 

When they come back from lunch they give off the scent of fuckin gerbils, Princess, holy hell, and they don’t pay even a smidge of attention to me. And I don’t even LIKE this period of history. Who gives a shit about WWII, like seriously, Princess, why does high school curriculum have such a hard-on for it? 

I just took the first job that was offered to me because I was so stressed about not getting a job at all, and I absolutely despise basically every single aspect of it. How do you do it? In Jasper’s pictures you look so happy, you look like you’re loving every minute, every little thing that happens. 

Hey Princess, wanna tell me it’s all going to be okay? 

2/3/20

Today someone drew a dick on the whiteboard and I was erasing it and thinking of that time we took all of the screws out of Coach Shumways chair. I know you didn’t get to see the results, because you didn’t have him for Government, but it was kinda hilarious. He sat in the chair and it went right out from under him and he let out this little scream...and I had to act like I had nothing to do with it.

He must have known I had something to do with it, he MUST have, because he glared right at me through the rest of class. 

Did he win that full-court-press he was making for the cameras in every classroom? He wanted to carve out a budget for them, but parents were saying no, that the money was needed elsewhere, that it was a violation of students’ privacy. Principal Sinclair himself was saying that if an active shooter situation happened the shooter could come into the office and see where every single person in the school was, and that was a terrifying possibility. 

What do you think, Princess? And does Shumway still coach football? He’s such an ass. He only has his job because he wins--and he only teaches because it’s the law. His gov’t class is complete bullshit, all we did was watch videos and do worksheets. An easy A, but we could have been learning about how the average citizen can change the town, the district, the state--the country! 

Man, I’m suddenly grinning at the thought of Coach coming up against you in faculty meetings. He may have once been in a position of authority (and have caught us making out in the hall) but now you’re equals and Clarke, you were never one to back down from a fight. If he says or does anything you don’t agree with...oof. 

I told my kids that “dick on the whiteboard” is a newbie-level prank and told them about all the pranks we played on Coach. I might suffer for it but I think they liked me better by the end. It humanized me. 

I hope things are going to be better now. We’ll see. 

2/17/20

Okay, Princess, I don’t hate kids as much as I thought. 

I do, however, hate grading papers. 

And you know how I told them all the pranks we played on Coach? Someone took all the bolts out of my chair. The class thought it was HILARIOUS. I took it in stride, though--knew it was coming. 

I also told them about me and Murphy repeating his prank of duct taping all my shit to the ceiling. Seems unfair for me to have to peel things from the rafters again but at least these ceilings are popcorn so it won’t be as bad. I’m just waiting. 

In the meantime class is paying attention to me and being a lot more cooperative so things are getting better, I think. 

Saw you on Jasper’s instagram with Alexandra again. There’s such a light in her eyes when she looks at you. Your face was away from the camera but hey Princess, you know that girl’s in love with you, right? 

While we’re on the subject of relationships, I should tell you that I’ve been texting with that guy from Epoch--Gabe. I had to tell him the truth, that I just now figured out that I like guys too, and I’m sorry if I’m kind of an idiot about certain things. I didn’t tell him that he’s the one who triggered all those feelings and realizations, cause I think that’s kind of a lot, right? To put on someone? 

Anyway he talked about this guy he used to date who was insanely bi-phobic and Gabe himself would never be gross like that, he has no problem with me liking girls too. 

He also told me he’s a little bit worried about being my “first” and I had to tell him about Murphy, about--those feelings, you know? Gabe says piecing things all together like that when you’re a bit older is totally normal. 

He’s so smart, empathetic, funny in a dry kind of way. I like him a lot, Princess. 

So anyway, I guess we’re going on a date? We scheduled a hangout for later this week. I don’t feel weird about it in the “oh no I like boys now!” kind of way, but I do feel weird about the “I plan to move home within the next two years and I’m still in love with my ex” kind of way. 

He knows about you, kind of vaguely, and he knows about AA, seriously. I want to tell people that from the beginning, that I’m sober, because sometimes people feel so awkward about drinking in front of me, and sometimes all people want to do is go to bars and clubs and get trashed. And I get that. I want to do that too sometimes. Like, I’m young! But I just know it’ll open a whole can of worms that I won’t be able to close again. At least, not easily. 

So he and I will have to get to know each other without the soothing balm of liquor covering our awkwardness, and it’ll have to do. I’m going to dinner at his place, no wine included. 

Still trying to be better.

Still trying to come home. 

2/21/20

The date was so good that I now feel guilty. 

Now that I’m older I think about a lot of instances with me, you, and Murphy and I kinda think that if I’d figured this out when we were in college you would have encouraged me to explore it. And I dunno, Princess, but it makes me excited but hurts my feelings all at once. You would have been willing to share me? What a weird and possessive question that is, but the truth of the matter, Princess, is that I wouldn’t have wanted to share you. And that’s weird and possessive too, for sure. 

All of my students are into this app called Tiktok and I’m using it to get to know this entire generation. Gen Z. And you know it’s kinda different, the way they seem to view sexuality and dating. It’s all very open, it’s all very loose. I want to feel that way, especially now that I’ve met Gabe, but when I think of you dating I still get jealous. When I look at you and Alexandra together on Instagram, it’s painful. And that’s not fair, it’s not fair at all. But I just can’t get away from it. It’s like I’m scrabbling against a brick wall, trying to climb it and get away from my feelings, but I can’t get purchase, I can’t escape. 

Gabe says that our feelings are valid insofar as we’re feeling that way and it's okay to feel that way, but it’s not valid to treat someone badly because of the way we feel. 

I’m just not sure at all what to do with that statement. I’m not treating you badly ‘cause I never even see or talk to you. But I feel the way I do with such intensity and it’s not right, I know it isn’t. 

I’ve never admitted to myself that I should let you go. In the beginning I thought that I wished you wouldn’t love me, so you could get better and not feel bad. But somehow that feeling faded away, and I wished desperately that you would be in love with me forever, and miss me, and want me back. 

What kind of person does that make me, Princess? It’s seven years later and I’m still wishing those things even though I know they’re so unfair to you. 

And now I know they’re unfair to Gabe, even though I like him a lot. 

Does being better mean I have to stop loving you and wanting you and wishing for you? 

I’m not sure I can be that kind of better at all. 

3/16/20

Hey, it’s my birthday, Princess.

Do you think of me on my birthday, the way I think of you, on yours? 

Gabe and I went out to a sushi restaurant and ate ourselves silly. He held my hand on top of the table and I felt--I dunno, Princess, I felt self-conscious but it was also nice to receive affection from someone I really feel cares about me? It’s only been a couple of months since I met him, but he really has a way of making you feel special and important. Big brown eyes and listening when you talk and, this is a crazy thing to say, Princess, but he reminds me of you. 

I pulled my hand away cause, you know, chopsticks, not because I was embarrassed. 

The way I like him is new. I mean, you and I, Princess, we got together at fourteen! I never had the chance to date other people, not really, and my first kiss was with Raven, who, no matter how many times I kissed her, always stayed so firmly in the “friend” column. We were just figuring things out, kissing-wise. Roma was a mess and I remember like 25% of being with her, and Echo was...I appreciate so much that she steered me towards AA, but sometimes I felt like such a fixer-upper boyfriend. And I was never, ever going to be fixed the way she wanted. 

Gabe doesn’t want to change things about me. Besides the way I load the dishwasher, which he says is shameful. 

5/3/20

Several letters ago I said to you that wanting to be in love with someone and actually being in love with them are two different things. I was thinking of you and Alexandra and the look on your face like you’re smiling but somewhere else?

I like Gabe a lot and I think he likes me a lot, too. 

I wish I didn’t know what it felt like to fall in love, because maybe I could convince myself that this is what it feels like. 

But I know better, now. And I should call it off, I should say thanks but no thanks, I should be better and I think I am better but when it comes to this--

Maybe I will love him soon. Or maybe the way I know how to be in love with you isn’t the way it will be to fall in love with someone else. There’s never going to be all that history between me and Gabe. How can I expect it to be the same? 

I shouldn’t let this go on.

But I think I will. Just in case. 

So much for being better.

6/2/20

Hey Princess, the school year is over! My students ended up liking me! I don’t entirely suck at teaching! And and and! They asked me to come back next year. 

I hesitated. But I’m--Princess, I keep trying to be ready. I keep thinking I can just find AA meetings in Polis and everything will be fine, I’ll go home, I’ll show you these letters and my book and we’ll be friends again and then maybe eventually we’ll be more again. 

Writing that feels damn unfaithful, ‘cause Gabe and I are still--I don’t know how to quantify it but I guess I can just say we’re still together. 

Every single step of “together” is really new to me. I don’t want to go into detail obviously but the first time we went to bed it was so--I felt self conscious and uptight. He was so kind, Princess, so patient. 

If I could drag “in love” out of my heart and give it to him, I would, I swear I would. 

Instead I write you letters and think about the times we went to bed, me and you, young and dumb and fumbling and figuring each other out. The way you stepped so carefully out of your clothes and the way my hands would shake as I tried to undo my buttons and you’d laugh and say, “God, hope your hands are shaking cause you’re excited and not because you’re scared.”

They were shaking because of both, Princess, I was worried I might break you, each and every time. And all that fear was pointless because in the end I wasn’t scared of breaking you at all and then I fucking did. 

I wanted to feel good tonight, write about the happy stuff. 

But I just don’t. 

I feel like I’m living this weird life in suspended animation while the life I should have goes on without me at home, and I’m worried about shit: my mom sounding too tired, Octavia in high school, you forcing smiles with the brunette and you all just generally being friends without me. And everything has been going on for ages without me, I know that, but it’s just--now I feel left out, missing you on some painful level that I don’t know how to deal with anymore, going to meeting after meeting and feeling--guilty and lonely and sad. 

And all along Gabe is there, being sweet, being conscientious, being basically perfect--but perfect for someone else, not me. 

Heard a song with the line, “all’s well that ends well to end up with you” but things don’t feel “well” lately, they feel all wrong. 

Wanting to be in love and being in love aren’t the same, I told you, twice now I’ve told you--but I’m not even talking about you anymore. 

I’m lonely, Princess. I can’t believe I’m lonely with this perfect man and this job that I wanted--I wanted! 

I had a family, though. I had my mom and Octavia and you, and Raven, Jasper, and Murphy. I had a small town where everyone knew my name because I rocked out every football game. 

More and more I’m so mad at myself that I never appreciated any of that, and in fact that I actively hated some of it, towards the end. I felt like you were weighing me down, and I wanted to break out, break free--

Towards what, I don’t know, and in that hanging instant where I thought you were dead some kind of revelation broke over my head: I’d been hopelessly stupid, hopelessly ungrateful, you weren’t trying to hold me down, you were trying to convince me to move forward fearlessly, and every time I mistreated you I was putting space between us that I would never get back, and I looked at you at the bottom of the stairs and thought--what have I done? 

I wanted space between us? Guess I got that, didn’t I? The bitterest of medicine. 

Keep saying I’m not ready to come home. I might just be afraid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter Title: On a String/Bright Eyes
> 
> Bellamy can't let himself be happy even in a great relationship. Poor boy, beating himself up and feeling sorry for himself all in the same breath. 
> 
> Love y'all's comments more than onion rings and desire nothing more than your validation.

**Author's Note:**

> Fic Title: Story of Another Us/5SOS
> 
> Chapter Title: Gold Mine Gutted/Bright Eyes
> 
> I had an idea to make all the chapter titles from Bright Eyes songs but we'll see if it pans out. 
> 
> I promise I won't slack on my other WIPs but since Darling is nearly done and this idea has been rolling around in my head...here we are.


End file.
